Rare Books and Special Collections is open this week through Friday, December 19, 2025. However, the reading room will be closed on Thursday and Friday (December 18–19). Over the holiday break, the department will be closed from Monday, December 22, 2025, through Friday, January 2, 2026, in observance of the campus-wide holiday break for all faculty, staff, and students.
RBSC will reopen on Monday, January 5, while the reading room will reopen on Wednesday, January 7, 2026. It’s always best to make an appointment if you plan to visit us.
This is the last blog post for 2025.
Happy Holidays to you and yours from
Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections!
by Sara Weber, Special Collections Digital Project Specialist
As a final installment of our look at the materials in the Special Collections’ Edward Gorey Collection (EPH 5004) in recognition of the centenary of Edward Gorey’s birth and the 25th anniversary of his death, we turn to some of his Christmas images.
Gorey created title pages and book covers, greeting cards, advertisements, magazine articles, and even a book he authored and illustrated himself (The Haunted Tea-Cosy: A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas, published in 1997). An illustration of the last three verses from the Twelve Days of Christmas was used as a holiday subscription advertisement for The New York Times—our holdings include a poster of the illustration alone, as well as an issue of Print magazine from 1988 that includes a reproduction of the ad in an article about Gorey.
Over the years, Gorey designed various Christmas cards. Above are three of the limited run cards he created with Albondocani Press (only four hundred to four hundred and fifty copies printed). These cards were not sold at the time, but rather were “to be used as a holiday greeting by the artist and publisher.”
In 1979, with royalties from the New York Dracula production, Gorey purchased a home in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, traveling there for the summers from the one-room apartment he rented in Manhattan, close to his publishers and the New York City Ballet. In 1983, he left New York City to live there exclusively. Below are two card sets from 1989-1990 featuring illustrations by Gorey and sold to raise funds for “Cape Cod’s neediest citizens during this holiday season”.
