Winter Break Hours

The Department of Special Collections will resume Library By Appointment for its reading room with appointments (Tuesday-Thursday, 1-4 PM) available beginning January 5, 2021. We hope you will make an appointment, request items from our collections to be used in our reading room, and venture forth into the new year.

The seasonally appropriate cover illustration for The girls of St. Wode’s is just one of hundreds of examples from our holdings included in the digital collection Publishers’ Bindings Online, 1815-1930: The Art of Books in UW Digital Collections. Muff, stole, and fancy hat were evidently de rigueur for young women enrolled in this fictional English school: their adventures were described by L. T. Meade, pseudonym for Irish-born Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith (1844–1914). A number of works by Meade figure among historical titles transferred to Special Collections from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, and the covers of two others (Polly: A new-fashioned girl and Light o’ the morning) are also included in Publishers’ Bindings Online, 1815-1930: The Art of Books.

— Robin Rider