Welcome to The Manuscript Society

The Mission of the Manuscript Society is to encourage the collection and preservation of manuscripts and documents; to stimulate and aid collectors in their various collecting specialties; to facilitate the exchange of information and knowledge among collectors, scholars, dealers and the general public; and to promote the highest professional and ethical standards.

Featured

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Manuscript Mondays

The Manuscript Society is hosting monthly webinars on topics for collectors.  Each hour long webinar provides an opportunity to peek behind the scenes of valuations, writing & publishing, purchasing/selling, auctions and more.

Faneiul Hall in Boston, MA.

2026 Annual Meeting – Boston!

Join us in Boston for the Manuscript Society’s next Annual Meeting, taking place May 27–31, 2026. This year’s meeting coincides with Boston 250, the city’s commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.

Pictures from the Manuscript annual trip to Oxford & Cambridge.

2025 Cambridge / Oxford Trip Recap

Over several days, Manuscript Society members explored some of the cities’ most storied libraries, museums, and archives—places that hold centuries of history and some of the world’s most extraordinary manuscripts.

Latest Digest

Digest – January & February 2024

Manuscript Digest: January – February 2024 – This complimentary e-digest, now published bi-monthly, covers significant acquisitions and sales, manuscripts lost and found, rare books and ephemera, document conservation, and more news in this digest […]

February 7, 2024|

Recent Posts

MM On-Demand: The Tile Club 1877-1887 (11/07/22)

The Tile Club was one of many societies that formed across the United States during the late nineteenth century. It included well-known artists; Winslow Homer, William Merritt Chase, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Edwin Austin Abbey, J. Alden Weir, and John H. Twachtman. The club was founded in 1877 riding the wave of [...]

November 7, 2022|

Cursive Writing and Reading History

Reading History in Real Documents Drew Gilpin Faust, Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University, shares a lesson she learned when students in her undergraduate history class could not read documents written by soldiers and others during the Civil War. Why could they not read them? They were written [...]

October 21, 2022|

MM On-Demand: Harding and Phillips Correspondence (10/03/22)

The Warren G. Harding–Carrie Fulton Phillips Correspondence: A tangled tale of ownership rights, romance, and archival ethics Warren Harding Carrie Fulton Phillips On July 22, 2014, the Library of Congress opened the Warren G. Harding-Carrie Fulton Phillips Correspondence. The papers, which had been closed for fifty [...]

October 3, 2022|

2023 Maass Research Grant: Application Open

2023 Maass Grant Application Window Is Open Who can Apply Only scholars attending institutions with memberships in the Manuscript Society as of January 1, 2023, will receive consideration for the grant. Check the list of member institutions here https://manuscript.org/projects/scholarship-activities/. If your institution does not now have a membership, consider asking [...]

September 30, 2022|

MM On-Demand: Reading Silver Marks (09/05/22)

How to identity those marks. Sterling or silverplate? Domestic or foreign? Great Grandmother’s Silver. Now it is your silver, and you don’t know anything about it. What is its value? How is it valued? What do those marks mean on the base? Appraiser Leon Caster, ISA CAPP, will share a [...]

September 7, 2022|

LeNie Adolphson – 2022 Research Grant Winner

2022 Maass Research Grant Awarded This year’s Maass Research Grant goes to a scholar looking at the struggle for health equity through the long lens of one Chicago hospital. LeNie Adolphson is examining “Health Care in the Black Metropolis: A History of Provident Hospital, 1891–1960.” Provident was the first Black-owned [...]

August 4, 2022|
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