Once a month, five objects from across Special Collections’ vast holdings will be on display in the lobby of Firestone Library for anyone to come and see. Here are the objects featured in October 2023: Object 1: Inkwell: Self-portrait as a Sphinx by Sarah Bernhardt, […]

Selected by April C. Armstrong *14

Princeton University Library’s Special Collections, which hold materials spanning millennia across the globe, have a fair share of demonic depictions lurking on the shelves. One never knows which ghost, goblin, monster, or other feared spectre could possibly come traipsing through the vault’s locked door.

Selected by Dana Sheridan

Andersen was an impossible houseguest who often outstayed his welcome, but we are so glad to have these material witnesses to his talent.

Selected by Charles Doran

By Steve Ferguson This is the device of a bookseller, John Wight, who traded at the Sign of the Rose in St. Paul’s Churchyard, London, between 1549 and 1589.  He’s holding a book titled Scientia. This might be called a “canting” device (i.e., an emblematic […]

Selected by Adrienne Rusinko

By Will Noel Sandwiched between Sinclair Hamilton (Class of 1906) and William H. Scheide ’36 in the list of chairs of the Friends of Princeton University Library is Robert H. Taylor ’30, who had an extraordinarily long tenure–25 years. More information about him, and digitized […]

Selected by Katie Zondlo