Today is Bloomsday, the anniversary ofthe day that James Joyce met his future wife, Nora, as well as the date on which his novel Ulysses takes place. Ulysses recalls a single day in the lives of advertising man Leopold Bloom and brooding twenty-something Stephen Dedalus. Notorious for its length (over a quarter-million words) and narrative complexity (one […]
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Rare Ulysses items at RBML for Bloomsday
June 16, 2015
Putting the Hand back in Handpress
May 21, 2015
While cataloging this title from the Cavagna Collection – Per la facciata del Duomo di Milano (ca. 1657) – I came across something I’ve never seen before in a book from the handpress period: a handprint embedded in the paper fibers! Is it the vatman’s hand, who scoops the cotton rag pulp into the mould? […]
Help Solve a Tudor Mystery at RBML
May 20, 2015
King Henry VIII and his inner circle are once again in the public spotlight with the recent American premiere of the miniseries Wolf Hall, based on Hilary Mantel’s 2009 novel. The Rare Book and Manuscript Library proudly holds a piece of this fascinating Tudor history and we’re calling on our readers to help us find […]
The Pamphlet: America’s First Social Media
March 30, 2015
Today, social media is king. According to a Pew Research Center study, nearly one in three Americans get their news from social media.1 How, though, did colonial Americans get their information? While newspapers were the main source of news, their content was often limited to local happenings and news from London. Pamphlets filled the gap. Ranging […]
πr², but Books are Rectangular
March 14, 2015
Humans have long known that a special relationship exists between the diameter and circumference of a circle. As early as 2000 BCE, some had even found numbers to represent this relationship. By this date, the Babylonians knew that the circumference of a circle was always approximately 3 1/8 times larger than its diameter, while the […]
Three Euphonic Emmas
March 13, 2015
The Rare Book and Manuscript Library has finished processing an archival collection of French opera autographs donated by Illinois alumnus and operatic sound recording producer Robert Zarbock (’52). The Robert Zarbock collection of opera autographs [Post-1650 MS 0657] is largely composed of letters written by opera singers famous on the Parisian stage in the late-19th […]
Crypto-Judaism and the Festival of Esther.
March 12, 2015
Last week on our tumblr, we featured our copy of the Book of Esther to mark the beginning of Purim. When the Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478, many Jews outwardly converted to Catholicism but continued practicing Judaism in secret. Known as anusim, or crypto-Jews, they inserted certain Jewish traditions into Catholic practices. One such […]
Of Lice and Men: A Special “Robbie Burns’ Day” Post
January 25, 2015
Happy Robert Burns’ Day! In the spirit of good fun on this day that celebrates the great Scottish poet, we remind you of Burns’ poem “To a Louse” (1787). The brief poem addresses a louse, crawling upon a fine lady’s bonnet (“Ha! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?”) and reminds us of our own little […]
Cataloging Cavagna! The man behind the collection
January 22, 2015
To celebrate the recent grant awarded to the Rare Book & Manuscript Library by the Council on Library and Information Resources, we are offering a little background on the man behind the collection, Count Antonio Sangiuliani di Cavagna. In the weeks to come, the Cavagna catalogers will be showcasing a “Cavagna of the Week” every […]