In the digital age, we have all been spoiled by the ease with which we can share our written ideas with others, but let's take a moment to appreciate the skill, time, and resources that were once required to bring a text into print. This post examines the processes involved in operating a printing press in the 15th-18th centuries.
During the hand press era, composing the text of a book was among the most technical elements of the printing process. This post describes the labor involved in typesetting and imposition.
2024 was another busy year for the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. As a way of reflecting on this past year and looking forward to the next, we are here sharing some new resources as well as past memories. Happy 2025!
In creating Consider the Consequences! authors Doris Webster (1885-1967) and Mary Alden Hopkins (1876-1960) were toying with a new idea: write a book that provided readers with narrative options. The result was the first choice-based novel ever printed as well as the precursor to the Choose Your Own Adventure book series that would become popular later in the 20th century.
Though ice skating has been around for centuries, it only came into its current form and fashion in the mid-19th century and was still taking shape as a professional and competitive sport when Charlotte Oelschlägel (1898 - 1984) wrote The Hippodrome Skating Book in 1916.
Most of us learned in school that Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, which is not entirely accurate. He is, however, conventionally credited with inventing the process of mass-producing individual pieces of type. These innovations in moveable type allowed for books to be efficiently produced in large quantities and revolutionized the human ability to share ideas. This post explains the multi-step process of mass-producing metal letters to be used in printing texts.
Before today's thin, brittle paper made from wood pulp became standard, paper was handcrafted by experts using linen rags as the essential material. This post explains the process by which rag paper was made in Europe for centuries.
Mary Renault (pseudonym of Eileen Mary Challans) was a British lesbian writer best known for her widely read historical-fiction novels set in ancient Greece.
In Anglophone communities during the 16th - 18th centuries, a common custom was for book owners to add in their book a note of ownership in either English or in Latin. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds a number of examples of these notes that offer a curious study for those interested in historical linguistics.
