Rauner Special Collections Library

This time of year, we're getting pretty wistful for spring. As such, we've been looking at books on flowers and we have a lovely one to share today. Margaret Roscoe's 1829 Floral Illustrations of the Seasons is just what it sounds like: a series of botanical illustrations, each accompanied by a brief description of its classification, cultivation, and history. Prior to this work, Roscoe (née Lace) illustrated another botanical text written by her father-in-law, William Roscoe.

From the vantage point of 2026, women’s right to vote can seem like a foregone conclusion. Yet it took women almost 150 years from the founding of the United States, and over 70 years from the first women’s rights convention, for women to achieve suffrage on a national level.

Lately our Rare Book and Manuscript Metadata Librarian has been spending a portion of his time reviewing our incunable collection and, as a result, we have the opportunity to learn more about the volumes in our collection. An incunable, as you may already know, is the term commonly used to identify a book that was printed on a printing press using moveable type in 15th-century Europe. The name is derived from the Latin word for "cradle"and is meant in this context to refer to the infancy of printing in the West.