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.

  • Yale student presents a virtual exhibit on Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (Yale Daily News)

    September 20, 2021

    rodey conceived of this idea in a seminar she took during her sophomore year, “Art of the Printed Word,” taught by Richard Rose, a printer at the Yale School of Art. In an essay assignment, she compared the 1832 Philadelphia publication of “Pride and Prejudice” with the 2010 Belknap-Harvard annotated edition. Over the next year and a half, Brodey continued to reflect on how publishers treat and present the same text in different ways. Eventually, it became the leading theme of her exhibit. Nancy Kuhl, curator of poetry in the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, advised the project. Kuhl brainstormed with Brodey about how she could use the collection’s objects to illustrate her ideas and arguments in a compelling way. “Working online required changing some of our work processes but the payoff is the opportunity to share [Brodey’s] excellent exhibition with a large online audience that might never visit New Haven to see it in person,” Kuhl said. “Besides, her detailed research and thorough knowledge made our work easy.”

  • Drawing of fish bottle by Marianne Moore

    Go Fish!

    January 8, 2021

    Recently, we looked at games to play inside and outside. Today, let's go on an angling excursion.

  • Art & Protest: A Conversation

    October 14, 2020

    See, download, and share poster From the Battle of Seattle to Occupy Wall Street , Bolotnaya Square to Nuit debout , the Arab Spring , the Movement of the...

  • "New to the world" Talking to Leonard Marcus '72, a scholar of children’s books.

    September 1, 2020

    After our May/June and July/August issues reported at length on the pandemic and dissected the brutality of racism, we at the Yale Alumni Magazine dearly wanted to deliver something more joyful. COVID-19, let alone racism, won’t disappear soon; we’ll be coming back to those subjects. But for September/October, we turned to children’s books. As Leonard Marcus ’72 told me—and we at the magazine have embraced the concept for this issue—“Children’s smiling is relevant to getting through a crisis.”