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Lilly Library

  • Detail of the cover of the game box for "Say the Word," a dictionary game for children.

    Just Say the Word

    If you supply schools with dictionaries and hope that every home with children will have a children’s dictionary handy, you ...
  • Detail of the title page of A Treatise of Gravelkind, with red and black printing

    What Is Gavelkind?

    Few of us, not even lexicographers, recall William Somner (1606–1669), but he figures importantly in the history of English dictionaries ...
  • The title page of the Lilly Library's copy of Bernhard Schmid's Einer neuen kunstlichen Tabulatur auff Orgel und Instrument (1577). "Monasterius Weingarth" is written on the top and bottom of the page, with the year "1600" on the top.

    A Map for the Body

    By Travis Whaley. This summer, the Lilly Library acquired a rare copy of Bernhard Schmid’s Einer neuen kunstlichen Tabulatur auff ...
  • Yellowed magazine clipping with headline: F is for Fickle; Rushdie Redux

    Calling out censorship

    Madeline Kripke favored profanity and obscenity and collected many works published during the Great Censorship, when the Comstock Act of ...
  • Painting of a coyote in motion, using thick and quick brush strokes to give a sense of movement.

    Processing Capra Press

    By Hal Parkinson Who creates a book? Is it the author, who writes the story that fills a book’s pages? ...
  • Detail of book cover showing cartoon image of scowling army sergeant.

    A Chinful of Slang

    You Chirped a Chinful! Including Private Bill’s Dictionary of Service Men’s Chin Chatter [1943] is a bit of World War ...
  • Detail of entry defining "Bracelet" with comments about how to pronounce the word

    A Family Dictionary

    Ed Finegan and I have just submitted the Cambridge Handbook of the Dictionary to Cambridge University Press. If you’re a ...
  • Engraving in black and white showing a landscape of hill, lake and trees framed by a classical columns and statuary

    Websteriana

    Any large collection of dictionaries will overflow with works by Noah Webster, but Madeline Kripke also had a collector’s eye ...