Happy Winnie the Pooh Day

Today, January 18th, marks the 133rd anniversary of the birth of Alan Alexander Milne. Fans around the world celebrate it as “Winnie-the-Pooh” Day, in honor of Milne’s most famous creation. Although most readers know Milne through his works for children, he also wrote a number of novels and highly successful plays. In fact, he began […]

Lessons from Lessing’s Nathan der Weise

We’re celebrating religious toleration day in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library with the first edition of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan der Weise (1779)! This classic German play—written by a giant of German literature who was also, we are proud to say, a librarian—epitomizes the ideal of religious toleration through the dramatization of the Ring […]

Merry, Sparkly, and Bright!

It’s that time of year when houses and trees glow with holiday lights and, here in the Midwest at least, cars and windows boast thin layers of glimmering frost each morning. A few of the books in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library are getting a sparkly coating as well, thanks to a phenomenon known […]

Revolutionary Revolutions

When I was in elementary school, I had a small “Wheel of Presidents”—a device consisting of two cardstock circles affixed to each other in the center, one smaller, with a wedge-shaped cutout, and one larger, with miniature portraits of the U.S. presidents dotting its circumference. I don’t remember how I acquired it, but I do […]

How do you say “Remember, Remember the 5th of November” in Latin?

John Milton found a way at the tender age of 17, on the eleventh anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, when he wrote “In Quintum Novembris.” This rousing mini-epic praises God for preserving the heroic King James from a “band of impious Papists.” The poem ends with Milton’s description of Guy Fawkes festivities in the England […]

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

The John “Bud” Velde Visiting Scholars Program and the 2015 Kenneth S. Brunsman Visiting Fellowship The Rare Book & Manuscript Library University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign CALL FOR APPLICATIONS, 2015-16 Program Cycle The Rare Book & Manuscript Library annually awards two stipends of up to $3,000 to scholars and researchers, unaffiliated with the University of […]

Yummy Acquisition

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has recently acquired the first cookbook devoted to pastry making. Le Pastissier françois (The French Pastry Chef), published in 1655 by the great Dutch printing house of Elzevir, is a landmark in the history of cooking and cookbooks. The book is often […]

Freedom of Speech for Me….but not for Thee

John Milton (1608-1674). Areopagitica, A speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of vnlicenc’d printing to the Parliament of England. London: [s.n.], 1644. Shelfmark: 821 M64 N6. With manuscript warrant issued to John Milton on 25 June 1650. Shelfmark: Pre-1650 MS 0168 John Milton, arguably the most significant English poet of the seventeenth century, was also a republican […]

Victorian Scrapbooks Rediscovered

Here at The Rare Book & Manuscript Library, seemingly simple reference questions often turn into much deeper discoveries.That was the case when a patron enquired about our material concerning one Martin F. Tupper. If you aren’t familiar with Martin F. Tupper (1810-1889), then you probably didn’t live in the mid-19th century; if you did, you likely […]

Sesquicentennial of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

Abraham Lincoln’s “few appropriate remarks” at Gettysburg, delivered 150 years ago today, are memorialized on Lincoln Hall on the University of Illinois campus.  One of the biographical panels on the Quad side of the building depicts the president as he spoke.  Pictured as seating directly behind him, according to the manufacturer of the panel in […]