Cultural Record Keepers

In each issue (other than special themed issues), Libraries & the Cultural Record presents artwork related to libraries, archives, museums, and other keepers of the cultural record. For 29 years this publication, under the titles Libraries & Culture and the Journal of Library History featured a bookplate on the cover and accompanying articles. (See the Bookplate Archive). L&CR continues and expands upon this tradition with "Cultural Record Keepers."

Learn how you can submit to Cultural Record Keepers

See our Cultural Record Keepers archive.

 

Cultural Record Keepers, Volume 44, number 3

 

Bookplate of the English Book Donation,

Chicago Public Library

 

Bookplate courtesy of Chicago Public Library Archives

 

The Chicago Public Library officially opened to the public on New Year’s Day of 1873. Key to the formation of the Library was a notable gift from the British people that began an ongoing relationship between Chicago and the United Kingdom, a relationship that continues to the present day.  
 
This story begins on the evening of October 8, 1871, when the Great Chicago Fire began to ravage the city. The destruction was almost complete, including the loss of all 30,000 volumes of the Chicago Library Association, the city’s largest subscription library.  
  
Very soon after the disaster, the world responded by sending generous donations of money, blankets, and clothing to the stricken city.  But the most lasting gift came to be known, ultimately, as the “English Book Donation.” Working together, London businessman A. Hutton Burgess and Thomas Hughes, a Member of Parliament and author of Tom Brown’s School Days, recruited donations of books and other printed material for Chicago.
   
Eventually nearly 8,000 volumes arrived in Chicago; a special bookplate, printed in black with a red border, designated each book as “a mark of English sympathy” and included the name of the donor. Queen Victoria donated The Early Years of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort, 1819-1841 by Sir Charles Grey (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1868). This volume was personally signed by the sovereign. (The bookplate shown above was placed in Victoria’s donated book, but was not personally signed by the queen.) Read on to learn how the book donation would lead to Chicago's free public library.
 
Constance Gordon, Chicago Public Library Archives

 

Cultural Record Keepers, Volume 43, number 4

 

Littlefield Fund for Southern History

University Libraries

University of Texas at Austin

 

Bookplate courtesy of University Libraries, University of Texas at Austin.

 

Since its establishment in 1914, the Littlefield Fund for Southern History at the University of Texas at Austin has assembled in the archives and libraries of the university an incomparable resource for research on the eleven states of the South and their place in American history. Learn more about George Washington Littlefield (1842-1920) and his desire to correct the inadequacies of history textbooks that misrepresented the contributions of the South.

David B. Gracy II, University of Texas at Austin

Submissions

We invite submission of images of bookplates, posters, and other visuals that represent a collection, public or private, or an institution charged with preserving and providing for the cultural record. An article of approximately 1,000 words should recount a brief history of the collection or institution and the historical background of the image itself. Submissions are subject to review by the editor.