News and more from ZSR’s Special Collections & Archives
I first found Charles Dickens while at the Worrell House in 1979. I have read many of his works over the years and have enjoyed them immensely. When I started working in Special Collections & Archives, I was very excited to find out that we have some of Dickens’ works in the original parts. One... Continue reading “Finding Charles Dickens” ›
For several months, I’ve been working with Wake Forest Professor Roberta Morosini, a Medievalist, on an exhibit about Boccaccio and the “Trecento” (14th century). The exhibit focuses on stories from Giovanni Boccaccio‘s most well known work, The Decameron. The Decameron, which was written in 1350, means ’10 days’ in Greek, and consists of a set... Continue reading “Boccaccio and 14th Century Florence Exhibit” ›
Tom Hayes’s documentary film on the life of his father, Harold Hayes, is titled Smiling Through the Apocalypse: Esquire in the Sixties. The film, which is currently showing at the River Run Film Festival, takes its name from a 1969 anthology of Esquire magazine pieces. Both works provide a view of the decade as chronicled by... Continue reading “Smiling Through the Apocalypse, edited by Harold Hayes (1969)” ›
Editing Harold Hayes: The Making of a Documentary Filmmaker A Discussion with Tom Hayes Friday, April 19, 2013, 4:00PM / Special Collections Reading Room / Z. Smith Reynolds Library Please join us in the Special Collections Reading Room on April 19 as Tom Hayes (WFU ’79) takes us behind the scenes of his documentary Smiling... Continue reading “Behind the Scenes with Documentary Filmmaker Tom Hayes” ›
What’s the oldest book in your collection? This is the question most frequently asked by visitors to ZSR’s Special Collections. Our oldest book is a manuscript codex dating from around 1240. Created two centuries before the invention of printing with moveable type, this book is a handwritten copy of a commentary on the Biblical gospel... Continue reading “Manuscript commentary on the gospels of Matthew and John, ca. 1240” ›
New Rollers on the ZSR letterpress: ZSR was very fortunate to have the donation of a letterpress by Carl Hein last summer. The press has not been silent in the past few months-quite the opposite. Carl Hein has been visiting Preservation during the fall and spring to help me learn how to operate the press,... Continue reading “ZSR Letterpress: hot off the press” ›
This week I attended the third annual “Understanding the Medieval Book” symposium at the University of South Carolina. It was my first time attending this seminar, which is organized by Dr. Scott Gwara of the USC English department and held in USC Library’s Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. This year’s seminar was... Continue reading “Medieval Manuscripts at ZSR, Part 1” ›
This post was written by Paige Horton, student assistant in Special Collections and Archives. Women and Wake Forest have quite the colorful history. In honor of Women’s History Month we here at Special Collections dug around and found something very special for you: The Deans Record Group: Dean of Women (RG4.3), and Women’s Government Association... Continue reading “Featured Collections: Dean of Women and Women’s Government Association” ›
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral is the first published volume of poetry by an African American author. This fact in itself would make the book significant, but Phillis Wheatley’s Poems has a complicated and fascinating history of its own. Readers of the 1773 first edition would have been familiar with biographical details of... Continue reading “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, by Phillis Wheatley (1773)” ›
Senior Molly McCurdy has been working in Special Collections for her entire time at Wake Forest. She is so good at what she does for us, we save only the very best (most tedious and complicated) projects for her. Currently, Molly is finishing the CRMF (Church Record Microfilm) project that we launched about two years... Continue reading “What Are You Working On? With Molly McCurdy” ›