The first published undergraduate yearbooks at the University of Pennsylvania were produced by the Class of 1865, as sophomores in 1863 and then as seniors in 1865. This yearbook, entitled “The Record,” has appeared annually since 1867. A growing selection of these yearbooks from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are available online, in their entirety, in PDF format.
Before the Class of 1865, some classes are known to have created “class books,” each a handwritten record of class members kept by one person in the class. The Class Book of the Class of 1852 was presented to the University by William Lehman Wells, A. B. 1852, in 1877. It survives to this day in the University Archives. It also can be viewed online in non-searchable PDF format.