Recent Acquisitions
Proactive collection development is paramount to the Newberry’s mission of serving research in the humanities. Each potential acquisition the library considers is intensely scrutinized with the goal of selecting unusual and evocative books and manuscripts most likely to challenge opinions, expand knowledge, kindle the imagination, and stimulate original research.
The child’s companion and juvenile instructor
Case AP 200 .C48
The Religious Tract Society was founded in 1799 as a publisher that issued religious tracts throughout England. Its aim was to promote literacy, religion, and appropriate behavior among the “lower classes.” The Society soon added material for children to its publication list, reprinting tracts by Hannah More and other 18th-century writers who composed works for young readers. This early juvenile periodical was issued monthly from 1846 to 1921 and contained stories with a heavy dose of moral instruction along with attractive woodcuts.
Jean Calvin’s Institutes
Case BX 9420 .I58 1576
This is the first edition printed in England of Jean Calvin’s Institutes in the original Latin. In its earliest recension, the Institutes were published in Basel in 1536; the first English-languge edition was printed in London in 1561. Our copy has been copiously annotated by an anonymous sixteenth-century reader. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books with contemporary reader notes are by virtue of our online catalog easily retrievable. The Newberry has a number of sixteenth-century editions of Calvin’s Institutes with similar annotations.
Latin Vulgate Bible
Vault Case MS 216
The production of portable Latin Bibles was standardized at the University of Paris in about 1235, and these Parisian Bibles, with their conventional order of Biblical books and specific form of modern chapter division, subsequently became models for small-format Bibles copied throughout France in the mid-thirteenth century.
Geographia
Vault Baskes G 1005 1540
The Newberry already owned two copies of the 1540 Sebastian Münster edition of Ptolemy’s Geography, but in the way of books in the hand-printed era, there were slight differences between them. This third “copy,” donated by Roger Baskes, differs markedly from the other two.
Camino Real
Hope Abelson Papers Box 1 Folder 5
This manuscript forms part of the Hope Abelson Papers, which contain scripts, theater mementos, correspondence, financial documents, photographs, audio recordings, and video recordings related to Abelson’s Chicago and New York theater career, her many philanthropic activities relating in particular to Chicago theater, and her personal life.
The Shakespearian Advertiser
Ruggles 456
A combination of commercial advertisements for merchants, located usually in Providence, R.I., alternating with cartoon drawings and appropriate quotes from Shakespeare’s plays. An excellent example of the prevalence of Shakespeare in nineteenth century popular American culture.