Manuscript Society

Manuscript Society is a senior society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. It is reputedly the arts and letters society at Yale.

Founded in 1951, Manuscript was Yale's seventh "landed" senior society. That is, its alumni trust owns the society's meeting place or "tomb". The Manuscript Society was one of the first senior societies to offer membership to rising females at Yale College.

Each delegation is selected by consensus among Manuscript alumni, trustees, delegates, and significant others, unlike other Yale societies where undergraduate members more freely select, recruit, and initiate their society's next delegation.

The Wrexham Foundation is the society's alumni arm. Since 1956, the foundation has underwritten the Wrexam Prize, a scholarship in the humanities for the senior who writes the best essay in the field of the humanities.

Manuscript briefly played host to the 1991-92 classes of Skull and Bones, who were temporarily locked out of their tomb by alumni who objected to its undergraduates' decision to offer membership to women. From its beginning the society also retained close connections with the campus literary society Chi Delta Theta, which formed in 1821.

Manuscript Society is part of a four-society "Consortium" with the Aurelian Honor Society, Book and Snake, and Berzelius.

The society holds the number 344 to be sacred. It supposedly holds Enlightenment ideals, and the sun and sunflowers are both important symbols to members.

The society holds an annual gathering in its tomb on Halloween. Its members also invite guests to events featuring notable alumni.