In 1965, Mrs. Joseph Regenstein announced a gift to the University of Chicago from the Joseph and Helen Regenstein Foundation to support the building of the Joseph Regenstein Library as a memorial to her late husband. That same year, the first book was acquired for the Helen and Ruth Regenstein Collection of Rare Books, named for Mrs. Regenstein and Mr. and Mrs. Regenstein's daughter, Ruth.
The goal of the project conceived by Mrs. Regenstein was to secure for the University of Chicago Library fine copies of important works of literature and the humanities in first or early editions. Over the past thirty years, the Regenstein Collection has grown to nearly 3,000 titles, representing a core group of English, American, and continental literary and humanistic texts. These books occupy a unique place in the Library's holdings because they are of both textual and artifactual interest.
The Regenstein Collection includes works by authors who are highly regarded today and also by those no longer critically esteemed who were vastly popular in their day. Works range in date from the sixteenth century to the twentieth, with the primary focus on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The presence in the Regenstein Collection of titles by popular authors of the nineteenth century, many of them women, has strengthened the Library's holdings in an area now of great interest to researchers. Triple-deckers by Anthony Trollope and George Eliot, novels by Charles Dickens in their original "parts" publication, by Jane Austen in their blue paper boards, or by William Faulkner in the original pictorial dust jacket stand alongside works by Jane Porter, Ann Radcliffe, Charles Reade, Rudyard Kipling, and Jack London.
The high standards of connoisseurship with which the Regenstein Collection has been developed reflect a keen awareness of the importance of the physical features of books, such as their original format and binding. These attributes enhance the research and educational value of the collection, especially as scholarly interest grows in the history of books. Also, as the canon of authors read and studied expands beyond the ones represented in the Regenstein Collection, and as the codex book assumes its place alongside other information formats, an understanding of how canonical works were first presented to their readers is becoming a central aspect of cultural studies.
Until her death in 1982, Mrs. Regenstein was an active participant in the selection of titles for the collection; and she regularly presented books to the collection in honor of the birthday of Ruth Regenstein, who maintains a strong interest in the vitality of the collection. The Helen and Ruth Regenstein Collection of Rare Books assures the continued availability of primary sources in the humanities to students and researchers at the University of Chicago Library.
In 1975-1976, the Department of Special Collections produced an exhibition based on the Regenstein Collection. The catalogue of this exhibition, The Helen and Ruth Regenstein Collection of Rare Books: A Selection Exhibited at the Joseph Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago (University of Chicago Library, 1975), is available for sale from the Special Collections Research Center.
For further information on the Helen and Ruth Regenstein Collection, please contact:
Special Collections Research Center
University of Chicago Library
1100 E. 57th Street
Chicago, Illinois 60637