By Elissa B.G. Mullins Climb aboard the S.S. Cuba for a rare glimpse behind the iron curtain through the keen eyes and profusely detailed journals of a French physician, Dr. O. Ménard (Post-1650 MS 0896). In July 1932, the S.S. Cuba was privately chartered by a French medical society for a special tour of Scandinavia, […]
Tag: Manuscripts
Journal of a voyage to Russia during the Soviet famine
August 19, 2025
Isolarii at the RBML
August 6, 2025
By Molly Banwart Today we’re looking at two seminal printed isolarii, or island books, from the late 15th and mid-16th centuries. The isolarii genre can be thought of as an encyclopedia of islands containing maps along with text descriptions of significant history, maritime information, mythology, and an analysis of the physical geography of the land. […]
Elizabeth Susanna Graham poems and drawings
July 1, 2025
By Elissa B.G. Mullins If seeking a little levity in lovely line and verse, look no further. Peek inside this slim volume of manuscript poems and drawings, bound in gilt-ornamented green straight-grain morocco… Past marbled end-papers like theater curtains, you’ll come to a hand-illustrated title page: “Poetry,” dated “MDCCCXV” [1815], showing two women in Greco-Roman […]
Rare Book & Manuscript Madness!
March 6, 2020
Can’t wait for March Madness to begin? Neither could we, so we decided to make our own March Madness bracket! But instead of picking college basketball teams, we decided to pick materials in our own collections and we’ll have the fans (you!) vote to advance them to the next round. HOW RARE BOOK & MANUSCRIPT […]
German Myths & Fairy Tales
March 20, 2019
Written by Taylor Fisk Henning Myths and fairy tales are two different types of stories that share a tradition of being passed down orally through many generations. Because of this oral tradition and the diffusion of tales throughout time, there are countless variants of the same stories in many different lands and cultures. In most […]