The Rare Books Collections include most works owned by the Library which were published before 1850 as well as later works which are exceptionally valuable, are numerically scarce, or have significant provenance. The collections are strongest in Catholic history and theology and in French literature.
Collection Highlights
- Counter-Reformation Collection
- John Henry Newman Collection
- G.K. Chesterton Collection
- Dante Collection
- Marshall McLuhan Collection
- Soulerin Collection
- USMC Publications Collection
- Sablé Collection for 19th French Studies
- Cabinets de Lecture
- List of 19th Century French Periodicals
Flickr Albums
Book History Laboratory
The Rare Books Collections function as an effective laboratory for book history courses in the St. Michael’s College Book & Media Studies Program. Students can use items in the collections to learn more about bindings, paper, fonts, illustration formats, and provenance:
- Alum tawed bindings
- Armorial bindings
- Armorial bookplates
- Armorial stamps
- Bevelled edge boards
- Binding errors
- Blind tooled bindings
- Book-worm damage
- Booksellers’ labels
- Chronograms
- Damaged bindings
- Diced leather bindings
- Discolored paper
- Doublures
- Dutch gilt papers
- Edge titles
- Embossed bindings
- Embossed cloth bindings
- Engraved books
- Engravings
- Errata lists
- Etchings
- Furniture
- Gauffered edges
- Gilt edges
- Gold blocked bindings
- Gold tooled bindings
- Half bindings
- Integral errata lists
- Leather thongs
- Loop-and-ball fasteners
- Manuscript waste
- Marbled edges
- Marbled papers
- Marginalia
- Metal clasps
- Paper repairs
- Paste papers
- Pictorial bindings
- Pictorial cloth bindings
- Pigskin bindings
- Printers’ devices
- Printing in multiple colors
- Prize bindings
- Publishers’ advertisements
- Quarter bindings
- Rubrication
- Separate errata lists
- Signature registers
- Sprinkled calf bindings
- Stained edges
- Stained vellum bindings
- Steel engravings
- Stipple engravings
- Ties
- Tree calf bindings
- Unrealized initials
- Vellum bindings
- Vellum printings
- Vellum wrappers
- Velvet bindings
- Visible structure
- Wood engravings
- Wooden boards
- Woodcuts