Collection highlights, news about acquisitions, events and exhibits, and behind-the-scenes looks at the work and services of Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) at Notre Dame.
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!
Page from “An American Original” by Carol Stevens (Print magazine, v. 42 no. 1, 1988), showing the use of the above illustration as an advertisement.
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.
197519791981
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”.
Merriam-Webster defines a vampire as, “the reanimated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave at night and suck the blood of persons asleep.” The Oxford English dictionary gives the middle of the eighteenth century as their earliest evidence for the word vampire, but the concept far predates that in the folklore of various cultures. While characters of a vampiric nature occur as early as Babylonian poems recorded on cuneiform and the ancient Greek writings of Philostratus, the folklore that is most significant to the development of the Western concept of a vampire was that of the Slavic cultures of Eastern Europe. These malevolent beings were seen as gruesome and frightening, because death, disease, and degeneracy were all attributed to their actions and influence. As the vampire became a more familiar figure in Western cultures during the eighteenth century (by 1740 Alexander Pope compared himself to “one of those vampires in Germany” when he went out at night), they were initially perceived in a similar, grotesque manner. However, over time the vampire—though still a villain—came to be portrayed as charismatic and seductive.
Bram Stoker’s 1897 Dracula was not the first vampire in English literature, Robert Southey’s 1801 poem “Thalaba the Destroyer” is generally given that title. Polidori’s short story “The Vampyre” (1819), Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood (1845–1847), and Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” (1872) all preceded it as well. But Stoker’s vampire has become the template against which all modern vampires are compared. The Count is initially described as,
“…a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. …his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as ice—more like the hand of a dead than a living man.” (Dracula, Chapter 2)
He is gracious and courteous, however, and as the novel progresses, and he feeds, he becomes less corpse-like. When Mina and Johnathan see him in London, she describes him as “a tall, thin man, with a beaky nose and black moustache and pointed beard… His face was not a good face; it was hard, and cruel, and sensual, and his big white teeth, that looked all the whiter because his lips were so red, were pointed like an animal’s.” (Dracula, Chapter 13)
Count Dracula has become more immortal in popular culture than he was in Stoker’s novel, the subject of numerous theatrical adaptations and cinema classics. The first play—more of a staged reading of the book, really—ocurred the same year as the book was published, as a way of securing copyright protection. In the 1920s, Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderson created their own adaptation, and in 1977 a revival of this version arrived on Broadway. This production featured the design work of Edward Gorey in its sets, costuming, posters, and playbills. He won a Tony Award for the Costume Design, and was nominated for Set Design. The play also won a Tony for Most Innovative Production of a Revival. (Frank Langella was nominated for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play, while Dennis Rosa was nominated for Best Direction of a Play.)
As the play became a popular success as well as a critical one, Gorey’s designs appeared on a variety of merchandise from t-shirts and bags to puzzles, toys, and even a miniature theatre, examples of many of which are found in Notre Dame’s Special Collections.
The Suzy Conway and Robert M. Conway Collection of Gorey Ephemera (EPH 5004) also includes articles and article illustrations, drawings, picture postcards, posters, and correspondence. There are materials relating to his work illustrating book covers for Doubleday, including a few other vampire themed or related texts.
In recognition of the centenary of Edward Gorey’s birth and the 25th anniversary of his death, RBSC’s September-October spotlight has highlighted Gorey’s engagement with the New York City Ballet in his distinctive noir style. Although the exhibit officially closes today, it will remain viewable through early next week, before the installation on November 5 of the November-December spotlight. Come visit Special Collections for a further look at some of Gorey’s distinctive work.
Happy Halloween to you and yours from all of us in Notre Dame’s Special Collections!
The exhibition Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924 is now open and will run through the end of January 2025.
Tours of the exhibit may be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Greg Bond at gbond2@nd.edu.
The current spotlight exhibits are Wollstonecraft: Revolution & Textual Evidence (September–December 2024) and A Fourteenth-Century Chanson de Geste Fragment (September–December 2024).
RBSC will be closed during the University of Notre Dame’s Christmas and New Year’s Celebrations, December 21, 2024 – January 1, 2025.
This Thanksgiving Rare Books and Special Collections features Truman Capote’s short story, “The Thanksgiving Visitor.” It first appeared in the November 1967 issue of McCall’s magazine; as seen here, it was republished with two other holiday stories in 1996 by Random House in its Modern Library series. “The Thanksgiving Visitor” is one of the few stories about Thanksgiving by a major American author.1 Capote wrote it soon after he had achieved professional success and widespread recognition for his nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood, published in 1965.
“The Thanksgiving Visitor” is loosely autobiographical, based on Capote’s childhood in early 1930s Alabama. Told in the first person by nine year-old Buddy, it recounts his bullying at school by an older boy, Odd Henderson. While Buddy’s family is relatively prosperous during the depths of the Great Depression, Odd’s family is struggling.
When Buddy’s older cousin, Miss Sook, learns of Buddy’s troubles with Odd, she invites him to Thanksgiving dinner, a grand and sprawling affair of family members, friends, and neighbors. At Buddy’s objection to his cousin’s generosity, Miss Sook reminds him, “when all around us we see people who can’t satisfy the plainest needs, I feel ashamed. . . . The shame I feel is for all of us who have anything extra when other people have nothing.” (p. 78)
When the gathering sits down to eat Buddy believes his moment for revenge has come. He announces that he had just seen Odd steal Miss Sook’s prized cameo pin. Miss Sook counters Buddy’s claim, clearing Odd of blame, at which point the boy confesses that he had stolen the pin, returns it, and leaves. Buddy feels betrayed by Miss Sook for having sided with his nemesis.
Later, Miss Sook explains to Buddy that however wrong, Odd’s action had not been calculated, while Buddy had set out deliberately to humiliate Odd in front of everyone at the table. “There is only one unpardonable sin,” Miss Sook tells Buddy, “deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven. That, never.” (p. 104)
1. Michael P. Bibler, “How to Love Your Local Homophobe: Southern Hospitality and the Unremarkable Queerness of Truman Capote’s ‘The Thanksgiving Visitor’,” MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 58, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 284.
The exhibition Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924 is now open and will run through the end of January 2025.
Curators Gregory Bond and Elizabeth Hogan will host exhibit open houses on select Friday afternoons before Notre Dame home football games, including on November 8 and November 15. The drop-in open houses will run from 3:00–4:30pm and will feature brief remarks by the curators at 3:15pm.
Tours of the exhibit may be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Greg Bond at gbond2@nd.edu.
The current spotlight exhibits are Wollstonecraft: Revolution & Textual Evidence (September – December 2024) and A Fourteenth-Century Chanson de Geste Fragment (September – November 2024).
RBSC will be closed during the University of Notre Dame’s Thanksgiving Break, November 28 – 29.
The exhibition Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924 is now open and will run through the end of January 2025.
Curators Gregory Bond and Elizabeth Hogan will host exhibit open houses on select Friday afternoons before Notre Dame home football games, including on October 11, November 8, and November 15. The drop-in open houses will run from 3:00–4:30pm and will feature brief remarks by the curators at 3:30pm in October and 3:15pm in November.
Tours of the exhibit may be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Greg Bond at gbond2@nd.edu.
The October spotlight exhibits are Wollstonecraft: Revolution & Textual Evidence (September–December 2024) and A Fourteenth-Century Chanson de Geste Fragment (September–November 2024).
RBSC will be open regular hours (9:30am–4:30pm) during the University of Notre Dame’s Fall Break, October 19 – 27.
The books in Special Collections’s April-May spotlight exhibit represent a small selection of materials from the University of Notre Dame’s collection that reveal the influence of William Morris on the Arts & Crafts movement. From the printing and binding of Thomas J. Cobden-Sanderson to the illumination and calligraphy of Edward Johnston and Alberto Sangorski, Morris’s ideal of the “book beautiful” was taken up by dozens of other makers who sought in their own way to merge artistry and craftsmanship in the creation of beautiful books.
William Morris founded the Kelmscott Press in 1891 in response to the decorative excesses of the waning Victorian era and declining material and design standards in book publishing. He aimed to print books “which would have a definite claim to beauty, while at the same time they should be easy to read and should not dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the reader by eccentricity of form in the letters.” 1 Perhaps for the first time in Europe since Gutenberg, Morris sought to design the whole book, selecting the paper, type, illustrations, typography, binding, and even the ink that were used in the production of books from the Kelmscott Press.
In making these decisions, Morris was informed by a set of exemplary medieval manuscripts and early printed works that he assembled as a personal reference library. On his historical influences in book design, Morris wrote “I have always been a great admirer of the calligraphy of the Middle Ages, & of the earlier printing which took its place. As to the fifteenth century books, I had noticed that they were always beautiful by force of the mere typography, even without the added ornament, with which many of them are so lavishly supplied.” 2 The University of Notre Dame is fortunate to have two medieval manuscripts (cod. Lat. c. 6 and cod. Lat. e. 4) owned by William Morris.
Lat. c. 6 binding (fore edge) and Morris bookplate.
Cod. Lat. c. 6 is a 13th century copy of Peter Riga’s Aurora. Its undecorated, utilitarian limp parchment binding is charming even in its worn state and exemplifies the authenticity that Morris was attracted to in scribal book production. This book features particularly pronounced “yapped” fore-edge folds on the parchment cover, which were intended to protect the page edges from wear. Yapped edges are commonly found in this style of binding, and Morris would go on to incorporate them in his binding designs for books from the Kelmscott Press.
Except for the Kelmscott Press edition of Chaucer’s works, most books from the press were issued in two possible binding configurations: limp vellum with colored silk ties or a hardcover binding with off-white linen covering the spine and blue paper covering the boards. The Earthly Paradise was one of the last publications by the Kelmscott Press, and this particular copy retains its William Morris-designed limp vellum binding with green silk ties. It was bound for the Kelmscott Press by J. & J. Leighton. The yapped fore-edge folds of this binding are reminiscent of the yapped edges on the Riga Aurora manuscript, though they are more diminutive. The use of green silk (custom dyed at the request of Morris and used for the fore-edge ties on this binding) appears frequently in British Arts & Crafts movement books. A similarly colored green silk was used to sew the copy of Men & Women by the Doves Press in the exhibit and is visible in the gutter fold.
Men & Women opening showing colophon and green silk in gutter.
After taking up bookbinding in 1883 at the suggestion of Jane Morris, William Morris’ wife, Thomas J. Cobden-Sanderson established a new aesthetic for gold tooling in bookbinding using repeating patterns of a custom-designed set of brass finishing tools and high quality leather. Cobden-Sanderson’s aesthetic was also disseminated through his teaching. His students, such as Douglas Cockerell and Katharine Adams, became leading binders in their own right. Like William Morris, Cobden-Sanderson was interested in the design of the whole book and believed that ideally each part of the book’s production–materials, typography, illustration, and binding–should function together harmoniously to communicate the ideas contained by the written word.
Though foremost a bookbinder, Cobden-Sanderson collaborated with Emery Walker—a renowned typographer who assisted Morris in the development of several Kelmscott typefaces—to establish the Dove Press in 1900 four years after the death of William Morris. Their Doves typeface was a more accurate, svelte interpretation of Nicolas Jenson’s roman types from the late 15th century than was Kelmscott’s squat Golden typeface used in The Earthly Paradise (and in Morris’s bookplate).
This Doves Press copy of Men & Women by Robert Browning was “flourished” in the margins by Edward Johnston. Johnston was a calligrapher who was inspired by Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and helped revitalize illumination and lettering in the Arts & Crafts movement. Ironically, Johnston is perhaps best known today for creating the sans serif typeface used by the London Underground transportation system than for his floral calligraphy.
Sometime between 1901 and 1905, Edward Johnston taught calligraphy at the Central School in London to Francis Sangorski, an virtuosic bookbinder and younger brother of Alberto Sangorski. Though Alberto was initially a bookkeeper from Francis’s bindery, Sangorski & Sutcliffe, Alberto learned the rudiments of calligraphy, quill pen cutting, and gold illumination from Francis. In 1905 at the age of 43 (coincidentally the same age Thomas J. Cobden-Sanderson gave up lawyering for bookbinding) Alberto Sangorski established himself as a calligrapher.3
This illuminated manuscript of John Milton’s On the morning of Christ’s nativity: an Ode was created by Alberto Sangorski sometime between 1905 and 1910. Alborto Sangorski developed his own miniaturist painting style based on Medieval and Pre-Raphaelite artists, which can been seen in this manuscript and in the manuscript of Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s The Blessed Damozel also on display in the exhibit. Alberto’s work drifted from the historical modeling of other Arts & Crafts figures and embraced the Edwardian era’s exuberance in design and catered to the conspicuous consumption of the truly “Gilded Age.”
This Alberto Sangorski manuscript of Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s poem The Blessed Damozel was bound by his brother Francis’s bindery, Sangorski & Sutcliffe. Francis Sangorski began his bookbinding apprenticeship in 1901 under Douglas Cockerell, another leading figure in the Arts & Crafts movement who himself trained under Thomas J. Cobden-Sanderson at the Doves Bindery. This binding is typical of Sangorski & Sutcliffe’s higher-end design bindings, featuring elaborate gold tooling and decorative leather onlays of thinly skived crimson goatskin. Sangorski & Sutcliffe’s most expensive and celebrated binding of an 1884 imprint of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám sank on the RMS Titanic on April 14, 1912. Francis Sangorski drowned six weeks later while swimming in the English Channel. Like the Milton manuscript, this codex was likely created early in Alberto Sangorski’s career sometime between 1905 and 1910.
Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:
Friday, September 1 at 2:00-4:00pm | Spotlight Exhibit Tour and Open House, Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, with curator Greg Bond.
Brief remarks by the curator about the exhibit will begin at 2:15pm, but visitors will be able to see the exhibit and browse the additional historical material on display for the open house at any time between 2:00pm and 4:00pm.
Tuesday, September 19 at 4:00pm | Centering African American Writing in American Literature – American Studies Professor Korey Garibaldi will draw on his new book, Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America(Princeton, 2023), and on recent library acquisitions to discuss how, during the middle of the twentieth century, modern American literature and its production were interracial. He will explore multiple aspects of American literary creation, including how African American content has been embodied in dust jacket and cover designs, illustrations, the style of type and bindings, and the overall production quality.
The exhibition Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States is now open and will run through the fall semester.
Curator-led tours, open to the public, will be held noon–1:00pm on the following Fridays: September 1, 15 and 22; October 13 and 27 [tour on 10/27 cancelled], and November 17.
Tours of the exhibit may also be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Rachel Bohlmann at (574) 631-1575 or Rachel.Bohlmann.2@nd.edu.
The September spotlight exhibits are Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (August – December 2023) and Centering African American Writing in American Literature (August – September 2023).
RBSC will be closed Monday, September 4th, for Labor Day.
Rare Books and Special Collections welcomes students, faculty, staff, researchers, and visitors back to campus for Fall ’23! We want to let you know about a variety of things to watch for in the coming semester.
Dublin Walking Tour
This week thousands of supporters of Notre Dame’s football team will travel to Ireland for the Aer Lingus Classic. The Hesburgh Libraries has developed a multimedia walk in Dublin’s city center that connects stories of our library collection with the streets and buildings along the way.
Fall 2023 Exhibition: Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States
This exhibition explores the fraught, circuitous and unfinished course of emancipation over the nineteenth century in Cuba and the United States. People—enslaved individuals and outside observers, survivors and resistors, and activists and conspirators—made and unmade emancipation, a process that remains unfinished and unrealized.
Curator-led tours are open to the public, noon – 1 pm on the following Fridays: September 1, 15 and 22; October 13 and 27 [tour on 100/27 cancelled], and November 17. Tours of the exhibit may be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Rachel Bohlmann at (574) 631-1575 or Rachel.Bohlmann.2@nd.edu.
Stop in regularly to see our Collections Spotlights
Fall Spotlight: Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities
This exhibit features a selection of sources from the Joyce Sports Research Collection that document and preserve the history of football at Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs). During the era of Jim Crow segregation, the vast majority of African American college students and student athletes attended HBCUs.
Many of the yearly gridiron contests between rival institutions developed into highly anticipated annual events that combined football with larger celebrations of African American achievement and excellence. The programs, media guides, ephemera, guidebooks, and other printed material on display document the athletic accomplishments, the celebrations, the spectacle, and the community-building that accompany football at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
August-September Spotlight: Centering African American Writing in American Literature
Author photos and bios from the back cover of Haywood Patterson and Earl Conrad’s Scottsboro Boy (1950).
Decades before Alex Haley’s Roots swept to number one on the New York Times Best Seller List in 1976, writing and editing produced by African Americans was central to twentieth-century American publishing. Literary production was interracial. View examples of mid-century books by African Americans whose designs—from dust jackets to illustrations to bindings and paper quality—conveyed their centrality in publishing and American literature.
These and other exhibits within the Hesburgh Libraries are generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment.
All exhibits are free and open to the public during business hours.
Special Collections’ Classes & Workshops
Throughout the semester, curators will teach sessions related to our holdings to undergraduate and graduate students from Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and Holy Cross College. Curators may also be available to show special collections to visiting classes, from preschool through adults. If you would like to arrange a group visit and class with a curator, please contact Special Collections.
Events
These programs are free and open to the public.
Friday, September 1 at noon-1:00pm |First of the curator-led tours of the Fall 2023 Exhibition, Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States. Additional tours will be held September 15 and 22; October 13 and 27, and November 17.
Friday, September 1 at 2:00-4:00pm | Spotlight Exhibit Tour and Open House, Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, with curator Greg Bond.
Tuesday, September 19 at 4:00pm | Centering African American Writing in American Literature – American Studies Professor Korey Garibaldi will draw on his new book, Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America(Princeton, 2023), and on recent library acquisitions to discuss how, during the middle of the twentieth century, modern American literature and its production were interracial. He will explore multiple aspects of American literary creation, including how African American content has been embodied in dust jacket and cover designs, illustrations, the style of type and bindings, and the overall production quality.
Learn more about Special Collections and other Library Events.
Thursday, October 5th at 5:00pm | The Fall 2023 Italian Research Seminar and Lectures will begin with a lecture by Daniela La Penna (University of Reading, UK), “The Archival Turn and Network approach: Examining evolving translation practices and discourses in the British publishing firm complex, 1950s-1980s.”
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.An early Italian vernacular response to Martin Luther’s teachings.Scrapbook of the Corona Rolling Devils.A political cartoon Andrew Zermeño.Some of the recent acquisitions highlighted on the blog in the past year.
There are no public events currently scheduled for August. Please check back for events being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections during September.
The exhibition Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States will open mid-August and run through the fall semester.
The August spotlight exhibits are Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (August – December 2023) and Centering African American Writing in American Literature (August – September 2023).
RBSC will be closed Monday, September 4th, for Labor Day.
