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Lynne Farrington

Senior Curator of Special Collections in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts 

Office: 614 Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center

Phone: 215-746-5828

Since 1995, Lynne Farrington has been a curator in Penn's Rare Book and Manuscript Library, now part of the Kislak Center, where her responsibilities include the acquisition of manuscripts, print materials, including books, pamphlets, prints, and ephemera, and archival collections. Over the years, Lynne has worked to develop collections as varied as artists' and fine press books; cookery; early English fiction; history of chemistry; materials in the history of the book; children's books; graphic materials including drawings, woodcuts, and engravings; world's fairs and expositions; and comic books and graphic novels. In addition, she works closely with faculty, students, and other researchers, curates exhibitions, organizes symposia and conferences, develops collection-related projects, fields reference queries, and gives presentations on the collections to classes and other interested groups. 

Before coming to Penn in 1992, Lynne lectured in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and worked in Special Collections at Cornell University. Lynne holds a BA in English and Philosophy from Wellesley College, where she worked in the college archives as a student assistant, and an M.Phil. in Philosophy from Yale University. She has also done graduate work in English at the Bread Loaf School of English (Middlebury College) and taken book history courses at Cornell University and Rare Book School (University of Virginia). More recently she has been assisting Penn English professor Peter Stallybrass with his Rare Book School course on The Bible and Histories of Reading.

 

Courses Taught