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Bookshop Exclusives
Showcasing the first Ferris wheel, dazzling and unprecedented electrification, and exhibits from around the world, the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 was Chicago's chance to demonstrate that it had risen from the ashes of the Great Fire and was about to take its place as one of the world's great cities. Millions would flock to the fair, and many of them were looking for a good time before and after their visits to the Midway and the White City. But what was the bedazzled visitor to do in Chicago?
Chicago by Day and Night: The Pleasure Seeker's Guide to the Paris of America slaked the thirst of such curious folk. The pleasures it details range from the respectable (theater, architecture, parks, churches, and synagogues) to the illicit--drink, gambling, and sex. With a wink and a nod, the book decries vice while offering precise directions for the indulgence of any desire. In this newly annotated edition, Chicagoans Paul Durica and Bill Savage--who, if born earlier, might have written chapters in the original--provide colorful context and an informative introduction to a wildly entertaining journey through the Chicago of 120 years ago.
A fascinating history of Chicago's innovative and invaluable contributions to American literature and art from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.
This remarkable cultural history celebrates the great Midwestern city of Chicago for its centrality to the modernist movement. Author Liesl Olson traces Chicago's cultural development from the 1893 World's Fair through mid-century, illuminating how Chicago writers revolutionized literary forms during the first half of the twentieth century, a period of sweeping aesthetic transformations all over the world. From Harriet Monroe, Carl Sandburg, and Ernest Hemingway to Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks, Olson's enthralling study bridges the gap between two distinct and equally vital Chicago-based artistic "renaissance" moments: the primarily white renaissance of the early teens, and the creative ferment of Bronzeville. Stories of the famous and iconoclastic are interwoven with accounts of lesser-known yet influential figures in Chicago, many of whom were women. Olson argues for the importance of Chicago's editors, bookstore owners, tastemakers, and ordinary citizens who helped nurture Chicago's unique culture of artistic experimentation.
Nerfect Artistic Novelties designed this special-edition pug to commemorate the reopening of our new-and-improved bookshop in 2018. Wearing a historically accurate costume drawn from the Renaissance-era graphic of a printshop featured on the our bookshop’s wall, this jaunty fellow holds an ink dauber that has left several ink stains on his clothes.
Exclusively available at the Newberry, this item comes in a smaller size as well.
Unnerve pesky printer's devils in your own shop with this large version!
Nerfect Artistic Novelties designed this special-edition Pug to commemorate the reopening of our new-and-improved bookshop in 2018. Wearing a historically accurate costume drawn from the Renaissance-era graphic of a printshop featured on the our bookshop’s wall, this super-cute little guy holds an ink dauber that has left several ink stains on his clothes. Exclusively available at the Newberry, this small-sized version is the perfect size to keep you company--but not too much. Comes in large size as well.
"TREATS FOR ALL!" cries this outspoken denizen of "Pughouse" Square. Ready to mount the soapbox in the name of snacks, this exclusive Pughouse Square plush pug was created for us by Nerfect Artistic Novelties. He features era-appropriate Wobbly dress and carries a dill pickle in his pocket (an homage to the legendary nearby Dil Pickle Club)!
“SNACKS FOR ALL!” cries our Pughouse Square plush pug! Wearing garments appropriate to a soapbox debater, our pug keeps a dill pickle snuggled away in its pocket, referencing the legendary Dil Pickle Bohemian Club, a haven for Chicagoan free thinkers and an inspiration for the Bughouse Square Debates we host every summer. Commemorate the debates (and instigate a debate of your own if you want—why not?) with our custom-made, Bughouse-themed pug.
No matter where you live, if you have Chicago ancestors, and want to know anything about them, this step-by-step guide written especially for beginners is for you and your search. Using a unique approach of helping you answer one type of question per chapter so you don't have to wade through a lot of preliminaries to launch or continue your genealogy work, DuMelle not only shares her finely-honed expertise on the basics, but slips in dozens of unusual and back-door tips for tracking down the toughest family details and mysteries.
More than one hundred and fifty years after Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, the Civil War still occupies a prominent place in the national collective memory. Paintings and photographs, plays and movies, novels, poetry, and songs portray the war as a battle over the future of slavery, often focusing on Lincoln's determination to save the Union, or highlighting the brutality of brother fighting brother. Battles and battlefields occupy us, too: Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg all conjure up images of desolate landscapes strewn with war dead. Yet the frontlines were not the only landscapes of the war. Countless civilians saw their daily lives upended while the entire nation suffered. Home Front: Daily Life in the Civil War North reveals this side of the war as it happened, comprehensively examining the visual culture of the Northern home front. Through contributions from leading scholars from across the humanities, we discover how the war influenced household economies and the cotton economy; how the absence of young men from the home changed daily life; how war relief work linked home fronts and battle fronts; why Indians on the frontier were pushed out of the riven nation's consciousness during the war years; and how wartime landscape paintings illuminated the nation's past, present, and future. A companion volume to a collaborative exhibition organized by the Newberry Library and the Terra Foundation for American Art, Home Front is the first book to expose the visual culture of a world far removed from the horror of war yet intimately bound to it.
With 30 color photographs and illustrations, this catalog from the Newberry Library’s Centennial exhibit in 1987 provides a modest yet rich introduction to the Newberry’s remarkable history and collections.
The first full-length study of the impact of the discovery of the Americas on Italian Renaissance art and culture, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence demonstrates that the Medici grand dukes of Florence were not only great patrons of artists but also early conservators of American culture.
In collecting New World objects such as featherwork, codices, turquoise, and live plants and animals, the Medici grand dukes undertook a "vicarious conquest" of the Americas. As a result of their efforts, Renaissance Florence boasted one of the largest collections of objects from the New World as well as representations of the Americas in a variety of media. Through a close examination of archival sources, including inventories and Medici letters, Lia Markey uncovers the provenance, history, and meaning of goods from and images of the Americas in Medici collections, and she shows how these novelties were incorporated into the culture of the Florentine court.
More than just a study of the discoveries themselves, this volume is a vivid exploration of the New World as it existed in the minds of the Medici and their contemporaries. Scholars of Italian and American art history will especially welcome and benefit from Markey's insight.
Based on a 1583 portolan chart by Joan Martines in the Newberry's collections, this map mug is 11 oz. of cartographic magesty.
Used by sailors in the Middle Ages, portolan charts helped them to navigate from port to port in the Mediterranean, allowing them to plot a course and then decide which of the 16 rhumb lines emanating from the compass rose to follow.
Traditionally, broadsides were used like posters to announce events or proclamations. This contemporary broadside was used to promote our exhibition Melville: Finding America at Sea. It features text of Melville’s poem “Tom Deadlight” drawn from the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Melville's Published Poems (the definitive textual edition of Melville's works).
Arranged in the shape of a whale's tail, the beautifully printed text diminishes in size as it descends the page and is accompanied by ornaments representing corpse lights treated with glow-in-the-dark ink.
A colophon at bottom left displays the number of the print and commemorates the exhibition, which was held at the Newberry Library in 2019 (the bicentennial of Melville’s birth).
This gorgeous print was produced for the Newberry by the Chicago print company the Starshaped Press in a limited edition of just 200 copies. 11 by 14", classic small poster size.
11 oz. of Newberry collections history! Enjoy a beverage from a mug showing a collage of bookplates featuring various Newberry's collections. (And that gentleman in the frame? None other than our founder, Walter Loomis Newberry.)
This card displays a gorgeous photograph of the Newberry's facade taken by Chicago photographer Bert Cohn. The Newberry's pink quartz bricks are beautifully offset by the lush green of a summer day. Each card, folded to 5.5x4.25 in., is printed in full color on bright white card stock and is blank inside. Each also comes with a white envelope. Order individually or in sets of eight.
Mask up (and show your support for our library) with a Newberry face mask, featuring our custom logo emblazoned over a photoprint of a beautiful marbled paper from our collection.
Our Deluxe Edition Newberry Mood Pencil provides welcome relief that you still exist by slowly turning Newberry Blue as you hold it. Pencil validation at its finest! Sold in a set of three.
Get your day off to the right start—and show your support of the Newberry while you’re at it—with this sturdy, Newberry-themed mug.
16 Oz of Get Up and Go for your academic (or other) pursuits.
This 11x14" broadsheet was designed and printed by the Starshaped Press in Chicago for the exhibition Renaissance Invention: Stradanus’s Nova Reperta. Depicting a printing press and created using letterpress-printing techniques, as well as antique metal types and ornaments, the poster is an homage to the history of the printing trade. A limited number of signed prints on Neenah cotton paper are available exclusively at the Newberry.
Given our old-school predilection for print, we found a kindred spirit in Starshaped Press, the print shop behind this exclusive letterpress print depicting our beautiful building.
Since 1999, Chicago-based Starshaped Press has stayed true to the original craft of letterpress. Using antique metal and wood type, the shop has bucked popular trends by showcasing the beauty and relevance of well-designed, historic type. Unlike most letterpress shops, Starshaped Press focuses on reusing existing materials (some over 150 years old) for all projects—meaning that no plastic is ever used in production.
A stellar expression of the shop’s style and ethos, this handsome poster is 9 by 12" and fabulous for framing.
Daniel Greene traces the emergence of the idea of cultural pluralism to the lived experiences of a group of Jewish college students and public intellectuals, including the philosopher Horace M. Kallen. These young Jews faced particular challenges as they sought to integrate themselves into the American academy and literary world of the early 20th century. At Harvard University, they founded an influential student organization known as the Menorah Association in 1906 and later the Menorah Journal, which became a leading voice of Jewish public opinion in the 1920s. In response to the idea that the American melting pot would erase all cultural differences, the Menorah Association advocated a pluralist America that would accommodate a thriving Jewish culture while bringing Jewishness into mainstream American life.
To mark its 125th anniversary, the Newberry has assembled one hundred and twenty-five of its most significant objects in one beautifully illustrated volume. Arranged in order to tell both the story of the library as an institution and its collecting history, The Newberry 125 covers a great breadth of topics including: American culture throughout the ages; the history of Chicago and the Midwest; geography and exploration; religion; music and dance; Medieval and Renaissance studies; and the indigenous peoples of North America. Each of the highlighted items has been photographed in stunning full color and is accompanied by a brief description, its call number, and a concise yet informative essay by a Newberry curator, librarian, or researcher on the object's importance to the collection. By describing the unique physical qualities of these items, as well as their great scholarly import, these essays remind us how irreplaceable many of these maps, books, and documents are--and how much they still have to offer us. The pieces themselves show us the amazing power of physical objects, particularly the products of humanists over many centuries. Included are items as varied as a painting by Elbridge Ayer Burbank, the correspondence between Ernest Hemingway and Sherwood Anderson, the earliest print version of Voltaire's Candide, and a copy of Ptolemy's Geographia that dates from the fifteenth century. The Newberry 125 is as wide-ranging and impressive as the library itself, and it serves as a wonderful introduction to the collection, as well as a new and fascinating lens through which visitors and fans can view the Newberry.