The beginnings

The collecting of rare books and manuscripts at the University of Kansas long precedes the opening of the Spencer Library. It began within twenty years of the University's founding with the purchase from J.S. Crew & Co., a Lawrence bookseller, in June 1881, of Raleigh's History of the World in 5 Books (London, 1687) for $3.87, along with Johnson's The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (London, 1781), 4 vols. at 63 cents each, and 30 other 18th century English imprints. By August 1886, donations of rare books had begun with the gift of Pliny's Naturae historiarum libri xxxvii from William A. Phillips, a Scottish expatriate who had come to Kansas in 1855 as a special correspondent for the New York Tribune and stayed to found the city of Salina.

These early acquisitions—all except one of the 18th century titles still in the library despite having been in the general stacks for nearly 80 years—eventually became the nucleus of a rare books collection with natural history and the English 18th century as two of its strongest specialties.

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