Booked for the Evening Items
Gifts will fund the Newberry’s Society of Collectors funds for future acquisitions or the processing and conservation work of materials.
Rare Photographs of Small-Town Illinois
Truxton N. Phillips, Photographs of various locations in Illinois, 1880-1920
Truxton N. Phillips (1849-1920), a carriage maker in Farmington, Illinois, was also a skilled photographer. Phillips captured remarkable images of 1880s and 1890s daily life in and around Farmington, including acrobats at a street fair, a high school play, train derailments, a soda fountain, farm scenes, a merry-go-round, and detailed house interiors. The collection includes 37 stereoviews and 169 glass plate negatives.
Selected By: Matt Rutherford, Curator of Genealogy and Local History, and Jo Ellen McKillop Dickie, Selector for Reference and Reference Services Librarian
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $2,500
Visiting Chez Paree
Chez Paree Collection, 1924-2005
The upscale nightclub Chez Paree opened in 1932 in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood, at Fairbanks and Ontario Streets. It remained in business until 1960, and hosted the biggest stars in comedy, jazz, dancing, and popular music. Entertainers who performed there include Louis Armstrong, Tony Bennett, Milton Berle, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis, Jr., Jimmy Durante, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Jackie Gleason, Bob Hope, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, Jerry Lewis, Liberace, Dean Martin, Zero Mostel, Louie Prima, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Mae West, and Henny Youngman. The Chez Paree collection is filled with memorabilia: programs, matchbook covers, menus, photographs, and swizzle sticks.
Selected By: Alison Hinderliter, Lloyd Lewis Curator of Modern Manuscripts and Selector for Modern Music
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $6000
Marian Contact Relic from Loreto, 1780
Marian Contact Relic from Loreto, 1780.
This woodcut of the Virgin Mary and Child testifies to the healing potential of fabric and other items touched to the miraculous home of Mary, enshrined in Loreto, Italy. It includes a swatch of black cloth from a veil used to adorn the statue of the Virgin from the house shrine, sealed onto the sheet to mark its official status. The annotations at the bottom specify the date 1780, while the woodcut was in use for almost twenty years by that point already, as the block is dated 1762.
Selected By: Suzanne Karr Schmidt, George Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $950
Surveying a Major Manuscript Acquisition
Johann Rudolf Halter, Kunst Bauch, 1625-1627
The Newberry recently acquired this stunning German surveyor's manuscript packed with distinctive illustrations of globes and scientific instruments, landscapes, and the Seven Wonders of the World. The surveyor, Johann Rudolf Halter, traveled all over Europe, and in Italy, added to the volume a handwritten copy of the (now very rare) surveying pamphlet by Galileo himself! This text and some illustrations are, however, suffering from structural damage to the paper. This can result from the varying handmade formulations of the iron gall ink traditionally used for this writing media. This gives our Conservation department the opportunity to study the manuscript closely and work to stabilize it with the most up-to-date methods for future use.
Selected By: Suzanne Karr Schmidt, George Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, and Kim Nichols, Director of Conservation
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $55,000
John M. Wing's Extra-Illustrated Books
John M. Wing's Extra-Illustrated Books
John M. Wing (1844-1917), one of Newberry’s earliest benefactors, had two major hobbies: book collecting and extra-illustration. The term “extra-illustrated” is a general term for books which have had material added to them by their owner, material which may be anything from a single portrait added as a frontispiece, to thousands of engravings, lithographs, photographs, maps, or letters. Wing extra-illustrated 85 titles, comprising 350 volumes. His collection includes commonly extra-illustrated texts, such as Granger’s Biographical History and leans towards his penchant for European history (The Age of Louis XIV, for example), though he occasionally picked more idiosyncratic texts.
Selected By: Megan Kelly, Director of Collection Services
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $2,000
Digitizing Items from the Midwest Manuscript Collection
A 'crossed letter' from the Alfred Barnes papers, 1834-1838. The image is now full-text searchable thanks to Newberry Transcribe volunteers.
The Newberry’s Midwest Manuscript collection includes a wide variety of documents documenting the history of the region that we call home. Many are individual or small collections whose research value far outweighs their size. This project includes preparation and digitization of 31 Midwestern collections, including items such as the diary from a Nebraska farmer’s visit to the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893; the diary and cased photograph of Curtis Lacey, a Union soldier in the Civil War from Grand View, Iowa; the travel journal of Frank Hibbard, going from Detroit to Iowa City via Chicago in 1857; and the hotel kitchen recipe book from Chicago’s Auditorium Hotel in the 1880s.
Selected By: Jennifer Dalzin, Director of Digital Initiatives and Services
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $7,000
A Controversial Revolutionary Broadside
Joseph Massie, Peace with America or Ruin to England, 1778
The British economist Joseph Massie wrote several tracts opposing war with America during the Revolutionary War. This very rare broadside includes 3 of his open letters, in the last of which he denounces at length "the present unnatural and unjust War against our American Brethren," backed up with a long list of "goods yearly sent from London to North America, in great or considerable Quantities; before our wicked American War begun." This fascinating item adds to the Newberry’s extensive collections from the American Revolution, just in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Selected By: Will Hansen, Roger and Julie Baskes Vice President for Collections and Library Services and Curator of Americana
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $2,000
Indigenous Cookbooks
The American Indian Center's Indian Cookbook (Ayer E98.F7.C66 1970)
Four recently acquired cookbooks created by Native community members in Chicago, Michigan, Kansas City, and Oklahoma support and attest to the growing scholarly and community interest in Indigenous foodways and, more broadly, culinary history. These cookbooks from the 1960s and 1970s include a wide variety of recipes—from Cherokee yam cakes to acorn soup to a wide variety of wild rice preparations.
Selected By: Analú López, Ayer Librarian and Assistant Curator of American Indian and Indigenous Studies, and Will Hansen, Roger and Julie Baskes Vice President for Collections and Library Services and Curator of Americana
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $1,700
Printing in Gold
Dionys Rosenfeld-Buchenau, Osmanische Post: deutsches Tageblatt (no. 642), 1895
Gold-printed Christmas edition of a German-language newspaper printed in Istanbul that includes reports on the latest events in the Ottoman Empire, Europe, and America, as well as poetry and literary commentary. The advertisements on the final pages are primarily for European goods, such as Viennese and Munich beer, cognac, clothing and bread, mostly produced or imported by German, Jewish, Slavic, and probably Croatian merchants and manufacturers residing in Istanbul.
Selected By: Jill Gage, Custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing and Bibliographer for British Literature and History
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $900
The Beauty of Marbled Papers
Victoria Hall, Marbled Flowers, 1998-2006
Ten original and unique marbled flower motif papers by Victoria Hall, a highly regarded paper marbler based in Norfolk, England. Each design is unique and made by floating and manipulating gouache paint upon carragheenan (processed seaweed). The entire image is created on a liquid surface before being captured on a sheet of paper.
Selected By: Jill Gage, Custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing and Bibliographer for British Literature and History
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $1,500
Essential Atlases for Local History
Title Atlas Company, Collection of dozens of county atlases, 1970-2010
This lot of 135 atlases in 157 volumes covers counties in Iowa (75), Minnesota (30), Nebraska (13), Wisconsin (12), and North and South Dakota (5). Each atlas includes plat maps of the county as well as extensive material of interest to local historians, including advertisements, dozens of pages in each volume of family portraits, and sometimes even prize-winning livestock. The Title Atlas Company would offer free family portraits in order to encourage families in each county to participate
Selected By: David Weimer, Director of the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography and Robert A. Holland Curator of Maps
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $3,518
Mapping a Fool's Paradise
Johann Baptist Homann, Accurata Utopiae Tabula, 1710
Johann Homann and his sons were one of the leading European map publishers of the eighteenth century. In addition to countless maps of cities, regions, and continents, they produced this satirical map of Utopia or Schlarraffenlandes (Fool's Paradise). The map’s many place names show a hilarious world overcome by excess with everything from “Magni Stomachi Imperium” (Empire of Fat Stomachs) to “Stolidum Mare” (the Foolish Sea). Fittingly, far to the North lies, “Terra Sancta Incognita” (the unexplored Holy Land).
Selected By: David Weimer, Director of the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography and Robert A. Holland Curator of Maps
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $960
Introducing Students to Book History
Collection Presentation at the Newberry
The Newberry’s Reader Services staff hosts and coordinates hundreds of visits from high school and undergraduate classes each year. They are creating an instruction kit that includes elements of a pre-1800 book, to provide a deeper understanding of how these books came to be and why they look the way they do. The kit includes materials such as imposition sheets and examples of laid paper, vellum, papyrus, and metal type. Students will be able to take home Newberry-branded imposition sheets from our quarto and folio versions of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
Selected By: Lisa Schoblasky, Director of Reader Services
Like it: $50
Love it: $100
Make it your Valentine: $700
Additional Information
If you have any questions about these items, or the Booked for the Evening event, please contact Jennifer Shulman at shulmanj@newberry.org or (312) 255-3594. If you are unable to attend the event but wish to support an item listed, we will happily take gifts over the phone or email in advance.