Stewarded by a team of specialists, Rauner Library houses over 100,000 rare books, millions of manuscripts, and the extensive Dartmouth College Archives. The team collaborates and partners with students, faculty, staff, and the archive-curious at Dartmouth — and across the globe — to accelerate research and advance scholarship. Come and get hands on with us!

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Title page of chapbook
If you're a long-time reader of our blog, then you've heard us enthuse about books before. As we explained in a previous post, chapbooks were cheap and ephemeral publications made to fill a demand for reading material by the working class who, while increasingly literate, could not afford to purchase a book outright. Chapbooks were an important means of disseminating popular culture as well as improving literacy rates.
The first page of a section titled "Of the Word YULE, formerly used to signify Christmas."
This week's book is John Brand's Observations on Popular Antiquities: Chiefly Illustrating the Origin of Our Vulgar Customs, Ceremonies, and Superstitions (1813). Originally published in 1777, then edited and rearranged by Henry Ellis, the two-volume set lays out the British calendar year and its accompanying popular antiquities, now better known as folklore. It devotes about 60 pages to Christmas traditions, some still familiar and others rather unrecognizable.

Exhibits

illustration of men digging up grave with corpse and tombstone in foreground and cityscape in background
September 16, 2024 - December 13, 2024
Rauner Library, Class of 1965 Galleries
Black top and bottom with yellow background overlain with a reperesentation of a stage. At right, a black hand grasps a mutlicolored 'rainbow' (red, yellow, green, black, and white)
July 08, 2024 - September 28, 2024
Rauner Library, Class of 1965 Galleries
silhouette of medusa on grey background
March 25, 2024 - June 28, 2024
Rauner Library, Class of 1965 Galleries