“But well or poorly designed and printed, in a collector’s album or on billions of Christmas greetings each year, each stamp has a message of its own, best expressed in the words of the original good tidings of great joy!” - Belmont Faries Dear Rare Reader, We hope...

“One of the supreme pleasures available to man is knowledge, discipline, intelligence guiding the hand to create beautiful and intellectually desirable objects.” - Lewis Allen Dear Rare Reader, This blog post is the second in a three-part series. To read the preceding post, click here. — As we learned last week,...

“For if the present generation find them merely “old-fashioned,” in a few decades, they would appear “quaint” and “curious,” and finally be considered very interesting ephemerae of a very interesting period in English art production.” - Gleeson White on the subject of holiday cards Dear Rare Reader, As always,...

The Rare Books Department invites you to view its most recent virtual lecture:  Books to Die for.  This October has been a frighteningly busy month for the University of Utah’s Rare Books Department as we prepared for our spookiest event of the year, “BOO!ks to Die For,”...

"I think about food the way I think about art and literature. I think of them all as these really simple, effective links. They all kind of create their own systems of communication." - Sandra Trujillo Wednesday, October 15, marked the final day of Hispanic Heritage Month. The...

This October, in collaboration with Bookish SLC, the Rare Books Department invites you to step beyond the library’s familiar daylight glow and into the dark and twisted corners of book history. The veil between this world and the next will lift at precisely 6:00 p.m. on...

"On leaf of pam, on sedge-wrought roll, On plastic clay and leathern scroll, Man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed, And to! the Press was found at last!" - John Greenleaf Whitter, The Library  What are Palm Leaf Manuscripts? Before the introduction of paper, palm leaf manuscripts were the most popular writing...

Happy Birthday D.H. Lawrence! “For him the novel was not the exposition of a thesis about people, but an adventure of the soul.” – Richard Aldington on D.H. Lawrence [caption id="attachment_34600" align="aligncenter" width="450"] D.H. Lawrence: a complete list of his works...