In 1776, ideas traveled not by screen or signal, but by ink and paper. Pamphlets, newspapers, and broadsides carried revolutionary thought from print shops into the public sphere, sparking debate, dissent, and, ultimately, the fight for independence. Nearly 250 years later, Utah is inviting residents...
Dear Rare Reader, Another year is officially in the books! 2025 was full of collaboration, growth, and impact, all of which was possible because of you — our wonderful, bookish community. Take a look at what we’ve accomplished this year, together. Cheers for now, The University of Utah’s...
“The literary and private press worlds are small and intertwined wherever they are, and the Rocky Mountain West is no exception.” — Richard L. Hardesty Dear Rare Reader, We hope the year has begun kindly for you. Here in the Salt Lake Valley, we’re still waiting for an...
“All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors drawn from certain great domains of our contemporary life—science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical...
“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,...
Booksellers do more than sell books—they preserve history, connect readers with rare finds, and keep the literary marketplace alive. "The Peddler" from Das Ständebuch (Book of Trades) By Jost Amman & Hans Sachs New York: Dover Publications, 1973 PT1762 E8 1973 Join us on Friday, November 21 from 6:00-8:00 pm in...
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,”...
Every page begins as a piece of paper, but not all paper is as plain as it seems. When you lift a sheet toward the light, you might notice a shadowed emblem: a fleur-de-lys, a jester, or a delicate line of text woven into the fibers....