Modern Books and Manuscripts

The collection of Modern Books and Manuscripts covers a wide range of subjects with strengthsin literature written in English outside the United States; American children's literature; the printing arts; LGBTQ writing; human sexuality and gender studies; playing cards;the history of hunting and fishing;and the history of finance.

With movie and documentary set to be released, Judy Blume is back in the spotlight (CT Public)
March 21, 2023
The Beinecke’s 132-box collection contains Blume’s early manuscripts, photos, awards and letters. Thousands of young readers wrote to her, opening up about topics like body issues, divorce and mental health. Young said Blume gave kids the words to talk about issues they couldn’t before, and she wrote back to many of them, some for years.
Infinity has a price
March 1, 2023
One of Yale’s most intriguing investments is a 375-year-old “perpetual” Dutch bond that still pays interest. It was issued by the Hoogheemraadschap Lekdijk Bovendams, a semi-public organization charged with maintaining the dike along the Lek river in the Netherlands. The water authority was founded in 1323; its successor still operates today, in the province of Utrecht, as the Stichtse Rijnlanden. This is where Yale Beinecke curator Timothy Young showed up in 2015 to collect twelve years of past interest payments, amounting to 132 euros. The authority was glad to pay. There are few entities in the world that can claim such a long, continuous history of good credit.
Judy Blume Goes All the Way (The Atlantic)
February 27, 2023
Beinecke Library unites past and present in spring exhibit (Yale Daily News)
February 8, 2023
On Jan. 27, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library unveiled its spring exhibit “Revisiting the Past — Imagining the Future.” Featuring artifacts spanning centuries and cultures, the exhibit is intended to add new perspectives to popular readings of history. The process for building the exhibit began about a year ago when Timothy Young, curator of modern books and manuscripts at the Beinecke, reached out to his colleagues at Sterling Memorial Library, sparking a new collaboration between the Beinecke and other collections at Yale.
Shooting the Sex Pistols at Cain's: Q&A with photographer Roberta Bayley on that snowy night in Tulsa and more (Tulsa People)
January 11, 2023
I sold all my negatives to Yale's Beinecke (Rare Book and Manuscript) Library. They're all available for research in the library forever or as long as the planet lasts. What I got in exchange for that was they digitized my entire archive, so I have everything on an external hard drive.
Incarceration and the Imagination: Display on the Mezzanine, October 12 to 23
October 12, 2022

Beinecke Library has a special display, October 12 to 23, in conjunction with the symposium on Incarceration Incarceration and Imagination on campus on October...
Student curator Gabrielle Colangelo ’22 brings obscured lesbian histories to light
June 6, 2022
For her exhibition, “We Are Everywhere: Lesbians in the Archive,” now on view in Sterling Memorial Library, student curator Gabrielle “Gabby” Colangelo ’22, began by asking questions. “Why are there so few lesbians represented in Yale’s archives? And who is Silvia Dobson, this unknown woman who appears so prominently in my search results?”
Tibet Kanjur 1: The Dalai Lama’s Visit to Yale in October 1991
April 18, 2022
Tibet Kanjur 1 was donated to Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 1950 by the 14th Dalai Lama. It was the first Kanjur to be bestowed on an American institution by a sitting leader of Tibet.
Eight writers awarded Yale’s Windham-Campbell Prizes
March 29, 2022
The prize recipients are in fiction, Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe) and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (Zimbabwe); in non-fiction, Margo Jefferson (United States) and Emmanuel Iduma (Nigeria); in drama, Winsome Pinnock (United Kingdom) and Sharon Bridgforth (United States); and in poetry, Wong May (Ireland/Singapore/China) and Zaffar Kunial (United Kingdom).
Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies continues expansion (Yale Daily News)
February 2, 2022
“I was thrilled to join other WGSS faculty at Yale given our university’s resources (especially archives at the Beinecke), the reputation of its student population at both the graduate and the undergraduate levels, the interdisciplinary reach of my field-defining colleagues and the strong leadership of my chair, Rod Ferguson,” Herring wrote in an email to the News. “My first semester of teaching last fall — a first-year seminar on LGBTQ Spaces and Places and an upper-level seminar on LGBTQ Life Spans — provided me with two of the best pedagogical experiences of my career.”