O Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold...
Humans have been compiling information to answer an infinity of questions for thousands of years. From Ptolemy to Izaak Walton, the best minds have annotated, edited, translated, measured, arranged, and defined what it means to live a life of wonder. From facsimiles of medieval encyclopedias, almanacs...
"Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!" -- Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road Peter and Donna Thomas are book artists from Santa Cruz, CA. Since 1977 they have worked both collaboratively and individually; letterpress printing, hand-lettering...
"An object is not an object. It is the witness to a relationship" -- Cecilia Vicuña The Rare Books Department invites you to view its most recent virtual lecture, "Armchair Indigeneity: Memory, Language, Dissolution, Exile, Extinction." We look at writings by and about indigenous peoples in Mexico,...
To you, my children, These lovely flowers I give. Prune ye my vines and fig trees, With care my flowers tend, But keep the pathway open Your home is at the end. from "God's Garden" -- Robert Frost The first Mesopotamian writings on clay tablets included information about plants. Ancient pharmacopoeias recorded...
“We prefer crude vigor to polished banality.” from Anvil, Jack Conroy, 1933 In recognition of Banned Books Week, Rare Books invites you to view its most recent virtual lecture, "Radical!" - an accompaniment to our latest digital exhibition. from Songs of the Workers; On the Road, In the Jungles, and...
"Do not believe more than what you see with your eyes." -- Montezuma to Cortés, according to Cortés, 1519 Rare Books invites you to view its most recent virtual lecture, "What You See With Your Eyes." Why are texts written? and for whom? Why are texts recorded...
“No swellings tell that winds may be upon some far-off happier sea- No heavings hint that winds have been on seas less hideously serene.” — Edgar Allan Poe, “The City in the Sea” Rare Books invites you to view its most recent virtual lecture, "A Drop in the Ocean." Learn...
from The Book and the Great Community, J. Willard Marriott Library, 1994 On May 17, 1968, Wallace Stegner delivered a dedicatory address to the new Marriott Library, in which he said: "To erect a great library in the year 1968 is an act of stubborn and sassy...
The covers of a book enclose worlds constructed of text and image. To open a book is to expose the intimate details of story, experience and idea. The Book Arts Program at the J. Willard Marriott Library champions wide-ranging explorations of the book. A fully...