SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Printed Books
Manuscripts

Although the major emphasis is on 16th and 17th-century Europe, 18th- and 19th-century Great Britain, and 20th-century America, other times and places are often extensively represented, especially in the general rare books collection. Over twenty-two thousand titles strong, this is the basic workhorse collection, the repository of all departmental holdings which do not fall into one of the separate "named" collections. It includes most of our sixteenth and seventeenth century English books, many eighteenth century English, Continental, and American imprints, most of our 19th-century imprints, and a good deal of our modern literature. It is strong in botany, voyages and travels, typography, 18th-century French history, 19th and 20th century English literature, English history, and economics; beyond that it includes lesser holdings on a multitude of subjects.

It is difficult to choose examples from such a varied collection but perhaps a few will serve to point the diversity: a collection of the works of Mark Twain (mainly the gift of the late Milton F. Barlow); Diderot's Encyclopédie; The Constitution of the State of Deseret, Kanesville, 1849; Stuart and Revett's The Antiquities of Athens, London, 1762-1816; a good Kierkegaard collection; Samuel Johnson's Plan of a Dictionary, London, 1747 (as also the first and other editions of the dictionary itself); some five hundred 19th century "yellowbacks"; Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, London, 1569, and a great many other notable books in the history of Anglo-American law; a strong Whitman collection; Montesquieu's De l'Esprit des Loix, Geneva, 1748; a small slavery collection--much of this drawn from the John Crerar Library social sciences collection, acquired by the Library in 1954; collections of A.A. Milne and Christopher Morley (the gifts of Elizabeth M. Snyder); Moxon's Mechanick exercises, London, 1694; and a good many works of Dickens, many of them (including, appropriately, Master Humphrey's Clock) in the original parts.

Additional subject areas, with some illustrative collections:

Spain, Portugal, and Latin America:

• The George C.A. Boehrer Luso-Brazilian collection (19th-century politics)
• The William Griffith Guatemala collection (late 18th- to early 20th-century)
• 16th-and 17th-century Spanish history and literature in the Summerfield collection
  

Voyages, travels and maps:

• Travelers' and explorers' accounts
• Historical cartography
• Antiquarian maps

Architecture:

• The Frank Lloyd Wright collection
• The Willett-Pashley collection

Economic and business history:

• The Richard S. Howey collection of economics and economic history
  

Reference collections:

The reading room contains the main reference collection of bibliographies, catalogs, works on the history of the book, palaeography, manuscript studies, diplomatics, and history of cartography, and basic reference tools to support the subjects in which the department specializes.

Manuscripts

The department contains around 500,000 items (some in named collections, some independent) from the antiquity to the present. The major regions covered are Britain, Europe, Latin America (to a lesser degree), and the U.S. (primarily for some minor literary genres). A few items fall outside these subject/time/locality boundaries.
The Department does not collect "high spots" (most of our medieval MSS, for instance, are not illuminated), but looks primarily for historical/textual value to future researchers. Most of our MSS are unpublished, and many deal with obscure people. We have few literary texts (but many letters of literary people), and little Americana.

Samples of broad subject areas, with some illustrative collections.

• British family papers (letters, legal documents, financial accounts, diaries, etc.), largely 1600-1900
  
• British government, politics, and foreign relations, 17th-19th century
  
• Several thousand miscellaneous British deeds, 14th-19th century
  
• Correspondence of British literary/theatrical/artistic groups, 19th- 20th century (e.g., the Pre-Raphaelites)
  
• Archives of science-fiction writers; partial archives of a few 20th century US/British little magazines
  
• Italian historical/political/economic texts and governmental correspondence, 14th-17th century
  
• Spanish and Portuguese politics, 17th-19th century (e.g., letter-books of the Viceroy of Catalonia, 1691-1693)
  
• Over 400 medieval texts of varied types
  
• Latin-American politics, 16th-20th century (e.g., the Gonzalez collection of historical, political, and economic material concerning Paraguay)
  
• Travel diaries
  
• Ornithology (e.g., a small collection of Japanese falconry handbooks; a large collection of John Gould natural history drawings, Australia and England, 19th century)
  
• Neurology
  
• Farming records, 16th-19th century, Britain and Italy
  
• Technology (e.g., maps of waterway improvements in Austria, 1823; books of household receipts)