The Newberry has actively engaged in publication to support scholarship and pedagogy in the humanities throughout its history, participating in the creation of reference works and tools, scholarly editions, curated exhibitions, materials for teaching and study, and other resources.
Major Publication Projects
The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries is a reference work designed to provide information about the creation and boundary changes of every county in the United States, from the earliest county creation in the 1600s to 2000.
Encyclopedia of Chicago: Developed by the Newberry with the cooperation of the Chicago Historical Society, The Encyclopedia of Chicago is the definitive historical reference on metropolitan Chicago. In addition to the digital version, it is also available in print.
Northwestern-Newberry Melville editions: In the 1960s leading Melville scholars began working with the Newberry and Northwestern University Press to publish the definitive critical edition of Herman Melville’s writings. 13 volumes have been published, the first in 1968.
Indians of the Midwest: Conceived and developed by the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, the NEH-funded multimedia website engages and informs a broad public audience about major issues in American Indian history and culture. Marrying the Newberry’s rich collections on Native American history with state-of-the art interactive web capabilities, the site contributes to the public discourse on contemporary issues involving American Indians—such as tribal sovereignty, hunting and fishing rights, casinos, treaties, museum collections, identity, and stereotypes. These issues are discussed in the context of the history and cultures of the tribes in the Great Lakes region.
Selected Recent Publications
Chicago to Lake Geneva, A 100-Year Road Trip: Retracing the Route of H. Sargent Michaels’ 1905 Photographic Guide for Motorists. Introduction by Robert W. Karrow Jr. New photographs by Wilbert Stroeve and James R. Akerman. Chicago: Newberry Library, 2008. Distributed by the University of Chicago Press. This book reproduces a 1905 guide used to navigate from Chicago to Lake Geneva and Beloit, with photos of the same scenes a century later.
Dumont de Montigny, Regards sur le monde atlantique. Ed. Carla Zecher, Gordon M. Sayre, and Shannon Dawdy. Québec: Les Éditions du Septentrion, 2008. This edition of a manuscript from French North America in the Newberry collections will be followed by the publication of an English translation. Learn more about the French version.
Mapping Manifest Destiny: Chicago and the American West. Michael P. Conzen and Diane Dillon. Chicago: Newberry Library, 2007. Distributed by the University of Chicago Press. The catalog from the 2007 exhibition charts the role historical maps have played in imagining, understanding, promoting, and exploiting the Western frontier of North America.
Exhibition-Related Publications
Maps: Finding our Place in the World. Ed. James R. Akerman and Robert W. Karrow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. A companion volume to the most ambitious exhibition on the history of maps ever mounted in North America, a collaboration between the Field Museum and the Newberry.
Elizabeth I: Ruler and Legend. Clark Hulse. University of Illinois Press, 2003. Commemorating the 400th Anniversary of Elizabeth I’s reign, this history tells the story of her life, reign, and legend with full-color reproductions of artifacts that were on display during the exhibition.
Disbound and Dispersed: The Leaf Book Considered. Christopher de Hamel and Joel Silver. Chicago: The Caxton Club, 2005. Distributed by Oak Knoll Press. This is the first in-depth examination of a bibliophilic phenomenon that began in the early nineteenth century and continues today. A leaf book is a book that contains an original leaf from an imperfect copy of an historic book bound with an essay about the significance of the historic book.
The Frontier in American Culture. Richard White and Patricia Nelson Limerick. Edited by James R. Grossman. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994. Two leading western historians explore the American preoccupation with the frontier for more than a century, in popular culture as well as in scholarly writing.
Research Center Publications
Additional publications specific to each research center may be found at:
Many recent gallery exhibitions are available online. Learn more about Digital Exhibitions.