German Christmas Songs (IUA15239)

A collection of German Christmas songs (call number IUA15239) from the library of Richard Aron passed through Quick and Clean Cataloging a few months ago. This Sammelband contains 38 pamphlets published between 1774 and 1828. Most of the pamphlets are only two to four leaves in length and contain the lyrics to German Christmas and […]

Manzanar Free Press (IUZ00262)

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 “Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas.” During World War II, over 120,000 persons of Japanese, German, and Italian ancestry were then removed from these military areas and relocated to internment camps in the Western United States–most for the duration of […]

Dobell Catalogs (017.4 D65c and 017.4 D65ca)

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library recently discovered that we hold a complete set of the Dobell catalogs, which appear to have been owned by the Dobell family.  On 16 July 1956, Gordon N. Ray purchased 22 volumes of the catalogs from Days Bookshop in England.  These volumes are uniformly bound in three-quarters brown goat […]

Congratulations to our Poet Laureate W. S. Merwin!

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Illinois now has even more reason to be proud of being the home of William S. Merwin’s papers: on Thursday, July 1, it was announced that William S. Merwin would be named the next poet laureate of the United States. The duties of the Poet Laureate Consultant in […]

Cyprian Norwid’s copy of Dante’s Divina Commedia

It is with great excitement that we announce the discovery of an Italian copy of Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia (Firenze: Felice le Monnier, 1844) bearing Cyprian Norwid’s ownership inscription and his presentation inscription to a Polish emigre in the United States. Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821-1883) was a Polish poet, dramatist, painter, and sculptor. He belonged […]

The Gift of King Charles III of Spain to James Harris, later First Earl of Malmesbury

Juan de Iriarte y Cisneros (1702-1771) was able to complete only one substantial volume of his bibliography of Greek manuscripts in the Spanish Royal Library in Madrid. When curator Bruce Swann decided to transfer the Classics Library’s copy of Regiae bibliothecae Matritensis codices Graeci mss. (Madrid, 1769) to the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, he […]

A Collection of Letters to Barnard Gregory

“Satire’s my weapon. I was born a critic and a satirist; and my nurse remarked that I hissed as soon as I saw light.” In the vault of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, we recently rediscovered a correspondence collection of the London actor and journalist Barnard Gregory […]

Collection of Danish plays uncovered

A collection of Danish plays from the 18th and 19th century has recently been cataloged. This collection of roughly 70 items includes translations of contemporary popular plays from France and Germany. The bulk of these items were found in the cataloging backlog section that our team is currently working through. The rest, which were in […]

Collection of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Spanish Romances (IUA19102-IUA19170)

While working through our miscellaneous backlog, we came across a stack of unbound short dramas printed in Barcelona.  This small collection (about 70 items) turned out to be a group of Spanish Romanceros, or ballads, printed by two different printing families.  The ballad was a popular form in Spain from the 15th century, and often […]

Unidentified coat of arms found in the Incunabula collection

  While cataloging a copy of Leonardus de Utino’s Sermones aurei de Sanctis (Venice: Johann von Koln and Johann Manthen, 1475) we came across a coat of arms that is so far unidentified. This coat of arms has been added to the recto of leaf a2 and is located after the incipit to the prologue.  […]