- In 1967, the University of Illinois Rare Book Room (as it was then called) purchased the personal collection of Professor T.W. Baldwin and his wife Regina Elisabeth Baldwin: 5,800 books from and about English and Continental schoolrooms of Shakespeare’s day. Baldwin had very clear, scientific aims for his study: to prove that Shakespeare’s grammar school education had furnished the “genetics” for every word of every play. (Three of Baldwin’s books used “genetics” in their titles.)
Fifty-two years later, the aims of Shakespeare scholars have evolved in new directions. Yet these 5,800 books are still priceless as a collection. Beyond documenting a scholar at work in the twentieth-century wild, they capture how education itself evolved over centuries. Even features of the Baldwin collection that might have seemed outmoded—multiple editions of familiar titles, with layers of readers’ scribbles— prove perfectly fit for new analyses of reading and learning practices. Today, on Shakespeare’s 455th birthday, we see that the Baldwin Collection, like Shakespeare’s works, does not live only in the past: its usefulness evolves with each generation of readers.
(Lecture begins at 3:30pm)
This event is free and open to all. Refreshments will be served.
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