Publications of the Penn Libraries

 2020 Calendar

Celebrate the joy of the year with a wondrous illustration every month by the renowned artist and storyteller Ashley Bryan. In 2019 the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts became home to the archive of Bryan, documenting his life and work. Bryan has published over twenty-five children’s books, of which Beautiful Blackbird is perhaps his best known. His newest book is Infinite Hope, an illustrated memoir about his experiences serving in a segregated United States Army unit in World War II and how art helped him survive the ordeal.

Currently unavailable due to Covid-19. We will resume sales when the library re-opens.

Written by curator Dr. Nicholas Herman

Making the Renaissance Manuscript examines the making of the handwritten and hand-illuminated book during a time of great political, religious, and technological transformation in Europe. This catalogue explores the full intellectual and artistic depth of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries through a selection of extraordinary manuscripts, cuttings, and incunables, from the Philadelphia region. This scholarly catalogue showcases the wonderfully diverse collections of Philadelphia institutions, as well as the research discoveries made during the course of the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis regional cataloguing and digitization project.

Manuscript Studies is a new journal that embraces the full complexity of global manuscript studies in the digital age. Its main goals are to bridge the gaps between material and digital manuscript research; to break down the walls that often separate print and digital publication and serve as barriers between academics, professionals in the cultural heritage field, and citizen scholars; to serve as a forum for scholarship encompassing many pre-modern manuscripts cultures—not just those of Europe; and to showcase methods and techniques of analysis in manuscript studies that can be applied across different subject areas.

The Bibliophile as Bookbinder explores one man’s passion for the natural world and the world of books. Over five decades ago, Mr. Neff began a serious pursuit both of trout and books on the art of angling. In the early 1980s, Mr. Neff transitioned from a career in graphic design to fine bookbinding. For over two decades, he has focused his binding efforts exclusively on work for his angling library. His collection of angling bindings, unique in its genre, will remain intact in perpetuity in the Penn Libraries. This fully-illustrated catalogue includes essays by Sid A. Neff, Jr., Lynne Farrington, and Cara Schlesinger, and features 230 full-color images, a glossary of terms, and a bibliography.

Curated by David McKnight

Wise Men Fished Here is a fully illustrated exhibition catalogue about the legendary New York City Gotham Book Mart founded by Frances Steloff in 1920. For decades the Gotham Book Mart was, as Steloff prosaically put it, “the headquarters of the avant-garde.” The volume explores the shop’s role in assembling, publishing, and promoting groundbreaking experimental writers, as well as its later years under the ownership of Steloff's hand-chosen successor, Andreas Brown, focusing on Brown’s passion for postcards and collaborations with graphic artist Edward Gorey. It includes expanded essays that explore the themes of the exhibition, historical background about the bookstore, and a bibliography of Gotham Book Mart publications.

2020 Winner of RBMS Leab Exhibition Award (Division Two)

Join the Kislak Center of the Penn Libraries as we waltz, mazurka, galop, schottisch, polka, and maybe even sing a ballad along our way through 2019, accompanied by a selection of lively lithographic illustrations found among our Keffer Collection of Sheet Music (ca. 1790-1895). The collection contains over 2,500 pieces of American sheet music, many with illustrated title pages and nearly half produced by Philadelphia publishers, as well as music manuscripts, all collected by Edward Iungerich Keffer, a Philadelphia dentist and noted amateur musician.

A fully illustrated catalogue of the exhibition's selection of books, photographs, manuscripts, and memorabilia by one hundred and one women and one man, dating from 1682 to 2015, reflects the sweep of women's experiences in the American wilderness. Items range from Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium (1705), Maria Sibylla Merian's monumental study of the flora and fauna of Surinam to sharpshooter and entertainer Annie Oakley's travel trunk and gloves, and a souvenir envelope with a one-inch red heart through which she shot from a distance of twenty feet. 2018 revised, second edition.

Curated by Nick Okrent and Rebecca Stuhr

Life During Wartime commemorates the 100th anniversary of the armistice ending the hostilities of World War I. It explores the varied experiences, both positive and negative, of University of Pennsylvania students, faculty, and alumni during the years of the war, 1914 through 1918. The accompanying catalogue includes an illustrated exhibition checklist and the essays: "Life During Wartime: Penn at Home and Abroad During the Great War," by Nick Okrent; "Who Belongs? Life in Philadelphia During the First World War," by Rebecca Stuhr; "'Nioc!! Nioc-Nioc!': Paul Philippe Cret, Penn's Poilu-Professor, and World War I," by Alisa Chiles; and "R. Tait McKenzie and the Science of Preparing and Reclaiming World War I Soldiers," by John F. Ditunno, Jr.

Currently unavailable due to Covid-19. We will resume sales when the library re-opens.

2018 Calendar

The Penn Libraries’ Kislak Center is home to the largest Jonathan Swift collection outside of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The three major collections are those of the Dutch scholar Herman Teerink, focusing on early editions; independent Swift scholar Archibald Elias, Jr., focusing on Ireland and on the books Swift was known to have read or owned; and British architect Geoffrey Denison, who collected illustrated editions of Gulliver’s Travels through the early 21st century. In celebration of the 350th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan Swift, we invite you to journey through 2018 with Gulliver, exploring unknown lands and peoples with him.

This set of notecards features twelve images of the Holy Land selected from the Lenkin Family Collection of Photography at the Penn Libraries. The Lenkin Collection contains more than 3,700 original photographs of the Holy Land taken from 1850 to 1937.

Currently unavailable due to Covid-19. We will resume sales when the library re-opens.

From flights of fancy to the depths of the sea, from Artic ice to springtime blossoms, from revelations of the heart to the mysteries of the mind, let To the Ends of the Earth take you on a fantastical journey through the Kislak Center's collections each month. Just as scholars and writers are inspired by our rare books and manuscripts, so too are visual artists. These original collages are drawn from the many wonders of exploration and discovery to be found in Penn's special collections. 

No longer available

Curated by Dot Porter

Reactions: Medieval/Modern explores the many and varied ways that people have reacted to, and acted upon, manuscripts from the Middle Ages up to today. Reactions take many forms. They include the manipulation of physical objects through, for example, the marking up of texts, addition of illustrations, the disbinding books or rebinding fragments, as well as the manipulation of digital objects, thanks to new technologies involved in digitization, ink and parchment analysis, virtual reconstruction, among many other processes. This volume includes an introduction by Dot Porter, essays by Bruce Holsinger, Erik Kwakkel, Kathryn M. Rudy, Michael Livingston, Angela Bennett, and an exhibition checklist.

Human fascination with animals has always inspired us to recreate their form in a variety of media; from cave paintings of prehistoric creatures to plush teddy bears, we surround ourselves with them. They are loyal companions and bloodthirsty predators, and they intrigue us with their strength and beauty. You'll discover a dancing hippo, beautiful bugs, colorful birds, and even see a swinging horse! All these and more are corralled here for you to explore throughout the year. See the magnificent, beautiful, and sometimes bizarre beasts inhabiting Penn's special collections.

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Curated by Daniel Traister

Covered in Vines explores Ludwig Bemelmans's multiple careers as restaurateur and hotelier, soldier, memoirist, short story writer, novelist, travel writer, script writer, cartoonist, illustrator, commercial artist, painter—all of Bemelmans's other personal and artistic endeavors, including even his other children's books, have disappeared beneath the towering success of Madeline. All deserve a second look. Based on both the collection formed by Jean Johnson Kislak, a Madeline aficionado, and Penn's own Bemelmans collections, Covered with Vines recovers a Bemelmans now largely forgotten, while also celebrating Madeline.

2017 recipient of RBMS Leab Exhibition Award (Division Two) honorable mention

Currently unavailable due to Covid-19. We will resume sales when the library re-opens.

Edited by André Dombrowski

The Image Affair examines the infamous wrongful conviction for treason, and eventual exoneration, of Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus as it played out in the French media at the turn of the last century. Encompassing the full range of the period's print culture including the illustrated press, broadsheets, photography, postcards, films, and even board games, the exhibition draws almost entirely from the Lorraine Beitler Collection of the Dreyfus Affair at Penn, one of the largest such collections in the world. This full-color illustrated catalog contains expanded essays on each section of the 2015 Penn Libraries exhibition.

2016 winner of the RBMS Leab Exhibition Award (Division Two)

Currently unavailable due to Covid-19. We will resume sales when the library re-opens.

Color in American Fine and Private Press Books explores the establishment of a fine and private press movement in America, beginning at the end of the nineteenth century and continuing to the present day, through its various uses of color. This illustrated full color catalogue of the 2016 exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries was designed by Jerry Kelly and includes essays by Lynne Farrington, Russell Maret, and Jean-Francois Vilain as well as exhibition checklist and list of presses in the collection.

Artist, cartoonist, and children's book author/illustrator William Steig (1907-2003) is perhaps best remembered for the drawings, cartoons, and covers which appeared in The New Yorker for over sixty years, beginning in 1930, and for his many children's books, from Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, winner of the 1969 Caldecott Medal, to Shrek, whose screen adaptation was winner of the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. This calendar, published in conjunction with an exhibition in the Goldstein Gallery in the Kislak Center, highlights some of the over 2,500 original drawings given to the University of Pennsylvania Libraries by his widow Jeanne Steig in 2013.

No longer available

While European manuscripts have been the subject of numerous historical, philological, and art historical studies over the past three decades, the study of the material culture of Asian (Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Taoist, and the like) manuscript traditions remains a relatively unexplored field. But Asian manuscripts, as the contributors to From Mulberry Leaves to Silk Scrolls demonstrate, contain much more than the semantic meaning of the words they reproduce. The ten essays collected here look closely at a wide variety of manuscript traditions with a special focus on both their history and the ways in they can be studied through digital technology to make the cataloging, comparative analysis, and aesthetic appreciation of them more accessible to scholars and students.

Edited by Arthur Kiron

This illustrated volume serves as a companion to the 2014 exhibition of highlights from the Kaplan Collection, including five scholarly essays by Dianne Ashton, Aviva Ben-Ur, Arthur Kiron, Adam Mendelsohn, and Jonathan D. Sarna that respond to and illuminate the selections of curator and editor Arthur Kiron. With a prologue by the collector, an introduction by the curator, an exhibition checklist, and a bibliography, it is a valuable introduction to the collection. The Kaplan Collection, donated to Penn in 2012 and considered to be the most important collection of its kind, consists of over 11,000 books, manuscripts, art, and everyday objects documenting commercial, social, religious, political, and cultural Jewish life from colonial times through the end of the 19th century.

2014 winner of the MARAC Arline Custer Memorial Award book award

Currently unavailable due to Covid-19. We will resume sales when the library re-opens.

Curated by: David Platt, Kathryn Schaeffer, and Jon Shaw

A full-color illustrated catalog, published to accompany the exhibition Prehistoric Wessex: Towards a Deep Map. This exhibit brings together material from Penn's collections to represent a palimpsest of the ideas, images, and descriptions around the monuments that informed Thomas Hardy's worldview; it is the beginnings of a deep map of the region, in the tradition of writers such as Wallace Stegner and William Least Heat Moon. It incorporates material from the pre-antiquarian chronicles to the present day, including the technical studies of the monuments made by antiquarians and early archaeologists, poetic interpretations of the landscape in literature and art, and the reimagination of prehistoric Wessex in popular culture (e.g., in cartoons, film, and television).

The Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection of Manuscripts, donated to the University of Pennsylvania Libraries by Penn Libraries Board members Barbara Brizdle Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Schoenberg (C53, WG56), embodies the great scientific and philosophical traditions of the ancient and medieval world. This thirteen-month wall calendar features illustrations selected from two astronomical treatises dating from the 1400s (LJS 463 and LJS 449).

No longer available

The period from the late twelfth through fifteenth centuries was an age of information in western Europe, and like today's electronic databases, medieval manuscripts helped readers access, process, and analyze information. Taxonomies of Knowledge: Information and Order in Medieval Manuscripts considers the role of the manuscript book in organizing and classifying knowledge. The collection's six essays demonstrate how the technologies of the book, including the types of material used, choices of textual arrangement, format, script, layout, decoration, and overall design, make it possible to determine what medieval readers and writers thought information was, what they determined was useful to know, and through which categories they decided it could be transmitted effectively to others.

Drawing upon the collection of Howard L. and Karen Schwartz, Wonders of the Microscope! explores the revolution in observational science facilitated by the invention of the microscope in the late 1600s. It also emphasizes the ways in which the microscope entered popular culture over the following centuries. With a preface by Dr. Eugene S. Flamm.

Thirteen of Catesby's birds from the third edition of The Natural History (1771) are reproduced for this 2012 thirteen-month wall calendar. Each bird is identified with the name given to it by Catesby, followed by both the current common and Latin names.

No longer available

Curated by Daniel Traister and Jack Sosiak

Between 1572 and 1617, Georg Braun, editor, and Franz Hogenberg, engraver, produced the Civitates Orbis Terrarum, a multi-volume collection of views of cities of the world published to complement the first modern atlas, Abraham Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, a map collection first published in 1570. A selection from collector Jack Sosiak's large group of Braun and Hogenberg's city views are exhibited.

Edited by Paul Eisenhauer and Lynne Farrington

An exploration of Wharton Esherick's artistic evolution during the early decades of the twentieth century. Based on the 2010-2011 exhibition in the Kamin and Kroiz Galleries of the University of Pennsylvania, this catalog includes over 300 images as well as an essay by Paul Eisenhauer, Curator of the Wharton Esherick Museum, expanding upon the exhibition's themes.

Curated by Daniel Traister

This exhibition surveys European book illustration during the sixteenth century from Penn's rich collections. Their wide variety of styles and subjects illuminate what early modern book illustrators provided readers in an environment visually far less rich than the one we take for granted. Religion, labor, science, warfare, costume, medicine, portraits, exotic places, and more—all these topics found their way not only into words but also into pictures.

Edited by Jon Shaw

This collection of pamphlets published in Philadelphia during and immediately after the Civil War provides fresh perspectives on the views of urban Union supporters. From the challenge to political liberties, to the future of freed slaves, to the medical treatment of soldiers, these accounts provide contemporary points of view from this time of national crisis and reform. Pamphlets in this volume have been selected from the collections of the University of Pennsylvania Libraries and are reproduced as high-quality facsimiles.

These notecards feature six different images of horses from the Fairman Rogers Collection at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. Fairman Rogers (1833-1900) was a Penn Alumnus (A.B. 1853, A.M. 1856), Professor of Civil Engineering (1855-1871), co-founder of the School of Veterinary Medicine, and internationally recognized horseman. These images are from works in the collection, given to the University and consisting of medical guides as well as books on the shoeing, harnessing, training, riding, and racing of horses. The collection serves as an important resource for research into the role of the horse in the technical, scientific, and social evolution of Europe and North America through the end of the nineteenth century.

Currently unavailable due to Covid-19. We will resume sales when the library re-opens.

Edited by John H. Pollack

This book is an exploration of education, schools, and methods of schooling in Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic in the colonial and early national periods. The volume includes nine essays by scholars of American history and education, an illustrated catalogue of the 2006 exhibition prepared by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, and a photographic essay of surviving colonial era schools buildings in the Delaware Valley. Contributors to the volume include Michael Zuckerman, William C. Kashatus, John C. Van Horne, Patrick Erben, Carla Mulford, George Boudreau, Mark Frazier Lloyd, Ira Harkavy, Lee Benson, and Matthew Hartley.

2010 winner of the MARAC Arline Custer Memorial Award book award.

Edited by Crofton Black

Transformation of Knowledge is a catalog of early manuscripts from the Schoenberg Manuscript Collection. Published in 2006, it is edited by Crofton Black with a preface by Christopher de Hamel. It includes images and texutal descriptions of over 250 works from the Schoenberg Collection.

Currently unavailable due to Covid-19. We will resume sales when the library re-opens.