Let’s Talk About Sex: A Valentine’s Day Pop-Up Exhibit at the RBML

12 February – 23 February 2018 Curated by Claire Berman & Siobhan McKissic Birds do it, bees do it, but how do we do it? Sitting down to talk about sex has long been a trope in television and books. These depictions show the discomforts parents, teachers, and friends face while trying to explain a […]

“This Never Fails if Rightly Done”: Cookery and Curatives from Regency England

A pop-up exhibit at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library 11 December – 22 December 2017 Curated by Katie Bergen The Regency era is a time often remembered for its glittering balls and the amusements of high society. These aristocratic pleasures have been canonized in literature that remains popular to this day, including works by […]

Happy Ninetieth Birthday W. S. Merwin!

The prolific and accomplished American poet and writer, William Stanley Merwin, turns ninety years young on Saturday, September 30, 2017. Since 1984 and by arrangement with the author, the formative materials for his nearly seventy books of poetry, prose, translations and plays–including notes, notebooks, drafts, typescripts, proofs, and correspondence–have been deposited in the collections of […]

Peekaboo!

We’re so excited about the eclipse, here at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library. This graphic comes from an announcement published in 1760 in Milan, alerting citizens of an upcoming eclipse to occur on June 13 of the same year. As the diagram shows, only seven-tenths of the sun would be covered. Spiegazione geografica dell’ecclisse […]

Decorated paper, German nobility, and wax seals, oh my!

The Cavagna Collection contains many surprises waiting to be discovered, and recently a particularly interesting find came across my desk. Like numerous other items in the collection, it is in a simple paper wrapper. In many instances paper wrappers served as temporary coverings until a work received a more permanent binding. In this case, however, […]

Cave of the Dogs

Next time you’re in Naples, why not take a side trip to the Grotta del Cane (Cave of the Dog)? As you can see from this engraving from the 1652 edition of Giulio Cesare Capaccio’s La vera antichita di Pozzuolo, it looks like quite the tourist trap. The Cave of the Dog takes its name […]

University of Illinois-Urbana Rare Book & Manuscript Library Invites Visiting Scholar Applications

The John “Bud” Velde Visiting Scholars Program The Rare Book & Manuscript Library University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: 2017-18 Program Cycle The Rare Book & Manuscript Library annually awards two stipends of $3,000 to scholars and researchers (unaffiliated with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) who would like to spend a month […]

Opulent Almanacs

                  It’s been a wonderfully colorful week here at the Illinois RBML: after Joan Friedman’s illuminating lecture on Owen Jones and color printing on Wednesday, we came across these exquisite chromolithographed title pages from Goffredo di Crollalanza’s series of almanacs: the “Almanach Héraldique et Drôlatique”, from 1883-1885. […]

Germania Rediviva

Goths, Angles, Saxons, Jutes—these are the tribes of ancient Germania, the so-called barbarians who migrated during late Antiquity, building the kingdoms that displaced Rome. The spate of museum exhibits and television shows is only the most recent expression our fascination with ancient Germania. Earlier historical periods likewise came under their spell. In this exhibit, we […]

Have I Got to Cook That?

The Frederick Joseph Wells Collection consists of letters written by the science-fiction author H.G. Wells to his family members, photographs of H.G. Wells, drawings by H.G. Wells, and other documents related to H.G. Wells. The collection was compiled by H.G. Wells’s older brother, Frederick Joseph Wells. The majority of the letters in the collection are from […]