General Special Collections
Explore over 69,000 rare books and 800 manuscript collections on Mississippi history, literature, and culture. Highlights include William Faulkner’s famed “Rowan Oak Papers” and works from renowned Mississippi authors.
General Special Collections
Main Special Collections contains over 69,000 rare books. Each of these volumes deal with Mississippi in some way: they are written by Mississippians; and are about Mississippi, etc. We collect Mississippi authors in every conceivable language: books on Mississippi history and culture and books related to the University of Mississippi.
Besides our rare book collection we have over 800 manuscript collections. These manuscript collections contain manuscripts of several sorts: literary; civil war; civil rights; family histories; business history, etc.
We are perhaps best known for our literary collections, the crown jewel of those is William Faulkner’s “Rowan Oak Papers.” Discovered in a broom closet at Faulkner’s home, the “Rowan Oak Papers” are one of the greatest finds of modern literary manuscripts. They contain several thousand sheets of autograph and typescript drafts of poems, short stories, film scripts, and novels written by Faulkner in some of his most creative years, between 1925 and 1939.