Season's Greetings! 

May this holiday season bring you rest, reflection and joy that will inspire a new year filled with scholarship, discovery and meaningful achievements.

KEN BURHANNA
Dean of University Libraries
and your friends at Kent State University Libraries

Illustration description:
This wintery scene is an engraving from the title page of the 1866 first edition of "Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl." Written by Quaker poet and abolitionist, John Greenleaf Whittier, Snow-Bound is a long, narrative poem presented as a series of stories told by a family gathered around the fire while a three-day snowstorm rages outside their Massachusetts home. The poem was enormously popular at the time and depicts a peaceful return to domesticity and rural life after the end of the American Civil War. Kent State University's Special Collections & Archives holds 10 different copies, in various editions, printings and bindings, enabling students and other researchers to study both the text and the materiality of this beautiful 19th-century work.