The Wheaton Archives & Special Collections and the Marion E. Wade Center are pleased to announce new additions to their archival holdings donated from the estate of Ralph Blair. Dr. Blair collected widely in the areas of American evangelicalism and British Christianity. Earlier this spring, several boxes containing artifacts from the Blair collection arrived at Wheaton College for campus archival staff to add to our rich collections. These items will soon be available for research, and a few highlights from the collections are featured below. We are grateful for these donations!
Continue readingRare Book Collections
“Nothing new but that which hath been before”: 2025 Accession Review
With the start of a new year comes a favorite tradition at Wheaton Archives & Special Collections – taking a moment to look back at some of the fascinating “new” old materials that found their way to the Archives over the last year. Below is a review of selected highlights from the Archives’ 2025 acquisitions:
Evangelism & Missions Archives
Perhaps the most significant additions to the Evangelism & Missions Archives were the large accessions we received from evangelical foreign mission associations. SEND International (formerly Far Eastern Gospel Crusade), Crossworld (formerly Unevangelized Field Mission), The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM), and SIM International are each multimillion dollar organizations that between them have thousands of workers on five continents. SIM, in particular, was born out of the merger of several different missions active in North and South America, Africa, Asia and Europe. Together these mission organizations gave more than 100 linear feet of their files to the Archives (TEAM has been donating materials since 2022) with other large accessions from SIM expected in 2026. In addition, the family of John Gration, a missionary of Africa Inland Mission and long-time professor of missions at Wheaton College, gave his files on the history of AIM, including the manuscript of his dissertation. Together these different accessions give an extraordinarily detailed pictures of North American Protestant missions around the world in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Continue readingShakespeare on Display
One of the jewels of the E. Beatrice Batson Shakespeare Collection is a copy of Henry the Fourth, taken from the fourth folio edition of Mr. William Shakespear’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1685). The play was donated to the College in honor of Dr. Batson’s retirement from the English Department in 1990. In celebration of the fourth folio turning an impressive 340 this year, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections revisits a 2015 feature from former Wheaton Library Metadata Associate, Brittany Adams, on the history and unique textual features of Wheaton’s “Henry.” The folio will be on display throughout the 2025 fall semester in the Wheaton College Library.
Continue readingPages of Wonder: A Journey Through the William S. Akin Rare Book Collection
In this day of technology, AI, and rapid information growth many decry the extinction of the printed book. But when someone handles a fine rare book, one does not easily look to its demise. Books are wonders. They are thoughts distributed to the world. They are invitations to new possibilities and new horizons.
Wheaton Archives & Special Collections has many wondrous examples of the power of the book – as presenter of ideas and as art. Special Collections’ foundational rare book collection, SC-01, was a gift from collector William Sanford Akin. The collection numbers over 2,000 monographs, with a special emphasis on British literature, including James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Lewis Carroll, and John Bunyan.
Continue readingMarginalia in the Archives
Wheaton Archives & Special Collections holds a wide variety of rare book collections, including more than 200 editions of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, many early texts by and about influential theologians and ministers like John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards, and hundreds of other manuscripts on Christian life, missions, art, and history. A few of these books also include inscriptions and marginalia – the scribbles, notes, and other markings made on the cover pages or in the margins of texts. These extra-textual materials often provide unique insights into the history of a book, as well as its impact.
Continue reading“The Letter Kills but the Spirit Gives Life”: Julia E. Smith’s Bible Translation
From the first century onward, the form and text of the Bible has been a source of near-endless debate, review, reinvention, and artistry. Available in thousands of different translations, editions, and compilations, it is a text that is at once universal and individual.
Wheaton Archives & Special Collections holds more than five hundred whole or partial Bible monographs. Each of these instances carry forward the spirit of their common text and yet remain unique, with their own voices and particularities. Some of this variety comes from the different language translations available in the Archives (ranging from Hawaiian to Sanskrit), but remarkable diversity can also be found within the English translations alone.
The archive’s shelves include multiple printings, editions, and facsimiles of famous English translations, such as the Wycliffe Bible (1388), the Coverdale Bible (1535), and the King James version (1613), as well more modern classics, like the New International Version (1984) and the Living Bible (1971), among many others.
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From the Vault 