Newberry Library

Visit the Mini Used Book Sale on Saturday, September 19, for a special half-price sale. Held in Rettinger Hall from 10am-3pm, the sale features a curated selection of used books across a variety of categories, and everything is 50% off! All proceeds will benefit the library’s collections and programs.

Are you curious about the role South Side religious communities had in social activism in 1960s Chicago? Then you should sign up for our "Sacred Ground, Contested City" free bus tour through the Woodlawn and Hyde Park neighborhoods. Visit historic churches and synagogues, hear stories of grassroots organizing and Black religious leadership, and consider the very different visions of social change that emerged from the same rapidly transforming neighborhoods. Along the way, enjoy a West African lunch and join conversations about the risks, responsibilities, and possibilities of putting faith into action. Click the link to register: https://www.newberry.org/calendar/beyond-belief-sacred-ground-contested-city

With Election Day on the horizon, we're throwing it back to 1909 with this postcard, which imagines a dystopian future where women can vote — and men are forced to care for their own children. A woman wearing a “District Captainess” sash heads out for Election Day while her overwhelmed husband is left behind with two crying children.

It’s one of the collection items, including letters, diaries, postcards, and a handkerchief (!), featured in "Suffragette City: Private Voices in the Long Fight for Women’s Suffrage," a new Digital Collections timeline tracing everyday reactions to the suffrage movement from 1867 to 1931.

See the postcard in context — and explore the full Suffragette City timeline — here: https://digital.newberry.org/suffragette-city

Postcard: "Election Day" (Modern MS Bossier NL112UNL) 1909.

Why did eighteenth-century colonial Brazil really move its capital from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro?

What sets 1970s Chicago experimental dance apart from other avant-garde dance movements?

How did sixty years of invasive federal policing of Indigenous peoples lead to the modern US carceral system?

These are just some of the research questions our new 2026-27 long-term fellows, Jade E. Bird, Antonina Woodsum, Jeffery Sklansky, Michael Kramer, and Moreno Pacheco (pictured above) are seeking to answer during their fellowships at the Newberry. To learn more about our new fellows and their exciting research projects, follow the link: https://www.newberry.org/blog/2026-27-fellows

The Newberry Library is hosting a rare map and book fair in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Chicago Map Society. Programming will include workshops on crafting with maps, speakers on topics including Kevin Mason on the history of maps of Iowa, and a guided tour of maps chosen by charter members of the Map Society. At least a dozen vendors from across the country will be on hand to showcase rare books, atlases, and related works on paper. Click the link to register for the event: https://www.newberry.org/calendar/rare-map-and-book-fair-2026

For the 150th anniversary of writer Sherwood Anderson's birth, we are throwing it back to this past March when writer and 2026 Newberry Library Award winner Jonathan Franzen stopped to ponder Anderson's manuscript for "Winesburg, Ohio," a towering work in the canon of American psychological realism published in 1919. Anderson's magnum opus is notable for its pathbreaking interconnected short-story format and its unflinching perspective on the darker side of small-town American life.

The handwritten manuscript shows a version of the masterpiece in progress and is a valuble resource for literary historians researching modernism. This is just one item in the vast Sherwood Anderson Papers, an early cornerstone of our Midwest Manuscript Collection. Anderson passed away in 1941; a year later, in 1942, Newberry Librarian Stanley Pargellis established the Midwest Manuscript Collection. Since the founding of this collection, its curators have archived the papers of diverse range of culturally significant Midwestern luminaries. Anderson's third wife, Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson, began donating portions of his papers in 1947 and continued depositing them through the 1950s.

Thanks to collections like Anderson's, the Newberry has become one of the premier Chicago literary archives, enabling people from the Midwest (like native-born Illinoisan Jonathan Franzen) and beyond to be continually inspired by our region's fascinating literary legacy.

We are thrilled to announce that our new exhibition, "Collecting Stories: New Acquisitions at the Newberry," is now open in the Hanson Gallery! The exhibition introduces pairings that say something about the Newberry’s past, present, and future. Each new acquisition is displayed with something longstanding in the collection. Here is a glimpse of some of the items:

A section looking at innovative printing for the visually impaired places Sophie Curtil's tactile1949 "Ali or Leo?" (Wing folio ZPP 2039) beside Sébastien Guillié's "Historical account of the education of young blind people" (Case Wing folio Z 4223 .376) from 1819.

Another pairing contrasts Indigenous and European placemaking. Kim Gullion's (Metis, Cree, and European settler descent) 2022 "Making and Remaking Memory," (Case oversize N6549.S73 A73 2022) applies beadwork to a page from a different copy of the 1953 "Dent's Canadian School Atlas" (Baskes folio G1019 .B29 1953), which sits next to the artwork, juxtaposing Indigenous and European modes of education about place.

Two items from Chicago choreographer Darlene Blackburn acquired over time: Blackburn's 1978 "Letter to Ann Barzel" (Dance-MS-Barzel) and a scrapbook of photos collected from 1978-1990 (Dance-MS-Blackburn), which shows the growth of Blackburn's dance practice.