The acquisition of the Rosenthal Collection of Printed Books with ManuscriptAnnotations by the Beinecke Library, and the publication of the catalogof that collection in 1997, inspired a Swiss bibliophile to offer us hiscollection of annotated incunabula. There are twenty-five fifteenth-centurybooks in the collection, the majority of them printed in Venice. The booksare dated between 1472 and 1494 and cover the range of subject matter ofearly printing, from Classical authors like Suetonius, Valerius Maximus,Ovid, and Juvenal to medieval theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, DunsScotus, and Albertus Magnus. Law, both canon and civil, as well as medicineand liturgical texts are included. Every volume is distinguished by theannotations of early readers, who have left in the margins their thoughtsabout and interpretations of the text, as well as occasional poems, historicalanecdotes, and autobiographical details. Highlights of the collection includean unrecorded edition of Justinian's Institutiones (Venice, 1476),with an illuminated miniature; a 1477 edition of Nicolas of Osimo's SummaPisanellae, with an illuminated initial and the original tooled leatherbinding; and a 1481 Italian edition of Livy, in original tooled leatherbinding with the arms and initials of the original owner.

A newly discovered preliminary draft of A Necessary Doctrine andErudition for Any Christian Man, commonly known as The King's Book,one of the key texts of the English Reformation. It supplies a criticallink in the known sequence of composition and revision of this celebratedformulary. This is the earliest manuscript version extant of this text.

The Processional was the cantor's book of instructions and music forthe major and minor processions that formed part of the medieval liturgy.The liturgical practices of the medieval cathedral of Salisbury formedthe basis for English Catholic rituals, and after the Reformation the Catholicbooks, with slight changes, continued in use until the Book of Common Prayerwas published in 1549. During this period, three editions of the Processionalwere published for the Church of England, modified to eliminate the feastof Thomas of Canterbury and all references to the Pope. Of the three editionsof the Church of England Processional (from 1542, 1544, and 1545), onlya handful of copies survive, as they were banned and destroyed as soonas the Prayer Book was introduced. This 1544 edition is printed in redand black with numerous woodcuts illustrating the performance of the liturgy.

This first edition of the correspondence of the twelfth-century mysticand musician was printed as part of the Counter-Reformation effort to bolsterthe Catholic cause in Germany. Hildegard, abbess of a powerful conventnear Cologne, describes in her letters various administrative and politicalissues as well as her visions and theological positions. The letters andtreatises in this volume are addressed to popes, emperors, archbishops,bishops, and other members of the clergy. The volume also includes a biographyof Hildegard.

Estienne's diatribe against the sloppy printers of his day is a monumentof typographical bibliography and a model of typographer's art. The beautyof the roman and italic types used for the volume and the elegance of theformat demonstrate how a book ought to be printed. This first edition ofEstienne's treatise is bound with three other rare sixteenth-century worksin a morocco binding made for Jacques-Auguste de Thou, bearing his armsand those of his first wife, Marie Barbançon.

The pastoral novel Galatea, preceding Don Quichotte bymore than ten years, was Cervantes's first major work. Written while theauthor was in the diplomatic service in Lisbon, it was inspired by an amorousintrigue at court. It was first published in 1584 after Cervantes returnedto Madrid. This Paris-printed edition in the original Spanish was editedand "corrected" by Cesar Oudin, the French royal secretary. The first editionpublished in any language outside of the Iberian peninsula and the thirdedition overall of this important early work, it is revealing of the famequickly achieved by the author of the Quichotte outside his own country.

A native of Pistoia, Andreini (ca. 1548-1624) was a famous actor andthe head of a troupe called I gelosi (The jealous ones). His signaturerole was that of Captain Spavento da Valle Inferna otherwise known as "Ildiabolico," a typical miles gloriosus or Braggadocio, whose servant Trappolaplays Sancho Panza to his Quixote in a series of comical dialogues or "reasonings."The first edition of these Ragionamenti (comprising 55 dialogues)was published in Venice in 1607. The first six were published the followingyear in Paris in French translation ("Les bravacheries du capitaine Spavente"),a testimony to Andreini's fame outside his own country. A second editioncame out in 1609. The 1615 edition is the third, with ten dialogues added.Andreini's wife, Isabella, was herself a celebrated actress and poet, whiletheir son Giovan Battista became a playwright and a collaborator of Monterverdi.Gian Battista's wife premiered Monteverdi's Ariana of which onlythe Lamento now survives.

Selected from titles added to the Faber du Faur Collection over thepast months, these two works-poetry from the first half of the seventeenthcentury, a novel from the second half-both have their source in the Bible.Opitz, whose theories of poetic language influenced a whole generationof writers, here paraphrases the Psalms according to French models: hefollowed the late sixteenth-century rendition of the Psalms by ClémentMarot and Théodore de Bèze, and the melodies printed in thetext are also French in origin. Meier's hefty novel, "presented for theexplanation of old times and for virtuous entertainment," relates the historiesof five Old Testament heroines. This dense text is leavened by a few primitivecopper engravings.

The Glasgow Mercury, which ran from January 1778 to September1796, appears to have been chiefly aimed at men of business. Each weeklynumber consisted of eight large closely printed quarto pages, two or sodevoted to advertisements. News was mostly reprinted from London papers,supplemented by columns devoted to reports from Edinburgh and Glasgow andsometimes from Ireland as well. In the early years the dominant topic isalmost inevitably the American Revolution, with extensive reports on debatesin Parliament and excerpts from colonial newspapers, especially the loyalistpress in New York; in addition, correspondence came directly to Scotlandfrom various observers in North America. After the end of the war, theUnited States remains a prominent topic; No. 431 (1786), for example, printsthe text of Jefferson's Act for establishing religious freedom in Virginia,and No. 515 (1787) gives an abridged version of the new U. S. Constitution.Much of the advertising relates to America as well. Other advertisementsare for newly published books, Irish lotteries, a wide variety of auctions(called "roups"), local tradesmen, patent medicines, circulating libraries,and much more.

Coverage of local affairs includes church reports, the universities,the courts, the buying and selling of land, etc. Occasional columns coverthe balloon ascensions by Lunardi in Edinburgh and Glasgow (1785), whichcaptured the public imagination. A number of issues for 1787 contain columnsrelating to Robert Burns, whose first volume of poems had just been published,attracting wide attention throughout Scotland. The many publisher's advertisementstend to be for books of a practical nature, such as the second editionof the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1778.

The set now in the Beinecke comprises 292 numbers, beginning with thefirst two, and runs until No. 559, with a consecutive run from No. 402onwards for the years 1785-88.

Andrew Gibb was the manager of the Boswell estate at Auchinleck, whichJames Boswell came into possession of following the death of his fatherin August 1782. The letters range in date from early November 1790 until1 May 1790, with an isolated letter of January 1781. The topics coveredrange from instructions about rent collection from various tenants to poultrysales, plantings of trees, and repairs. A letter of December 1790 refersto the imprisonment of Andrew Dalrymple for a debt to Boswell. A typicalletter, dated 13 November 1793, discusses farm rentals, the appointmentof a new minister for the parish, requests butter for his brother, andhoney for himself.

With an engraved frontispiece by Bartolozzi and six engraved plates,extra-illustrated with a proof of each plate as well as engraved views,admission tickets to musical events, and an autograph letter from Burneyto Edmond Malone, 1797, describing his formal presentation to the Queen.

Manuscript sheet with drawings at the head showing two fighting cocksengaged in "First Blood" and "Death" followed by the above title and sixteenitemized rules, concluding "These rules to be used in all Pits, sanctionedthis Fourth day of May in the year 1796."

This early work by Babbage, completed before he took up the positionof Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge in 1827, gathers seventracts by Descartes, Huygens, and Halley, among others. This copy comesfrom the library of the astronomer Sir John Herschel, Babbage's friendand contemporary at Cambridge, where, together with a fellow mathematician,they founded the Analytical Society in 1813.

This extraordinary little "pocket book for young and old" is an anthologyof poetry, anecdotes, riddles, information, and advice about the fine artof ice skating. The first part of the book amounts to a "how-to" manual,from how to select skates and secure them to your feet, to instructionsfor dancing on the ice. The second part taps literary sources and includesmany poems by the greatest of all German literary interpreters of skating,Friedrich Gottlob Klopstock. There are two poems by Goethe, and the bookis illustrated inside and out with crisp and charming engravings. Especiallydue to Klopstock's influence, the speed and exhilaration of ice skatinghad became a popular poetic motif at this time.

A successful banker and gold trader from Norwich, Connecticut, DanielWadsworth Coit (1787-1876) was also a talented artist and a friend of ThomasSidney Cooper, Copley Fielding, and Thomas Cole. He travelled to Peru twicein the 1820s. In January 1848, he was commissioned by the firm of Howland& Aspinwall to con-duct their operations in Mexico City, then occupiedby the United States. These 61 pencil, wash, and watercolor drawings datefrom those two periods of his life. The first 29 are Peruvian landscapesand city views as well as groups of people; nine are devoted to Lima andtwo show Arequipa and its volcano. The Mexican views are chiefly of MexicoCity and its inhabitants.

If he is remembered above all as a short-story writer and a novelist,Daudet was equally famous and successful in his day as a playwright. Healso had a career as a theater critic for several newspapers from 1874(the year of his first major literary success, Fromont jeune et Risslerâiné), to 1880. This 208-page notebook contains impressions,comments, and details on casts and new productions, scratched out oncethe writer has used them for his weekly chronicles. Among the plays mentionedare La princesse Georges by Alexandre Dumas Fils, La haineby Victorien Sardou, and Les héritiers Rabourdin by ÉmileZola. Contemporary actors discussed by Daudet include Sarah Bernhardt,Julia Bartet (who played a small part in Daudet's L'Arlésiennein 1872), and Constant Coquelin (the first Cyrano de Bergerac). In hiscomments, Daudet deplores the lack of spontaneity engendered by the excessivenumber of rehearsals and notes that the taste for operettas is now beingfelt as far away as China. This precious document on Daudet's working methodsjoins the manuscript of his masterpiece for the stage, preserved at theBeinecke in the Frederick R. Koch Collection.

A physician by profession, Schnitzler soon turned to writing as a livelihood.Anatol is his first published book, a cycle of seven one-act plays that presentamorous incidents in the life of the young man Anatol. The verse prefaceis by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Like that other great Viennese doctor, SigmundFreud, Schnitzler's themes are illicit love, sexuality, and death. Hisworks, which include plays, novellas, and novels, enjoy continuing popularity,a recent example being the Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut,which is based on Schnitzler's Traumnovelle.

In this short dramatic scene by the Viennese critics Friedell and Polgar,Züst ("a bad student") is having trouble memorizing all the factsof Goethe's biography. In his rage, Züst inadvertently conjures theghost of the poet, who (in thick Frankfurt dialect) agrees to go to Züst'sexam in his stead. Alas, the great man proves a little forgetful abouthis own chronology, remembers his tête-à-têtes withFrau von Stein all too vividly, and comes to grief by insisting that theTheory of Colors is his most important work. In short, Goethe failsthe Goethe exam, while his examiner, "the professor of German literaryhistory," apparently triumphs, unshaken in his literary-critical opinionsand compendious knowledge of the Goethe's life.

Richard Dehmel, a poet who began publishing in the 1890s, wasmuch influenced by Nietzsche. His work, including the cyclical epic poemZwei Menschen (Two People), attempts to resolve the conflict betweenunbridled instinct and self-discipline.The first poem of the cycle wasthe inspiration for Arnold Schönberg's string sextet VerklärteNacht.

Das bekräntzte Jahr (The Wreathed Year) is one of the fewpre-war works of the Austrian writer Max Mell, who after the collapse ofthe Austro-Hungarian Empire devoted his literary energies to Christian,classical, and mythological themes. Poems to the four seasons structurethis collection of verse, handsomely printed for the Axel Juncker Verlagin Berlin-Charlottenburg.

The writer, singer, and performer Emmy Hennings was among the foundersof the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, a center of the Dada movement.Later she married one of the principal Dadists, Hugo Ball. Das ewigeLied is a highly lyrical first-person narration that depicts the consciousnessof a person in the grips of a serious illness.

Das zwanzigste Jahr, the story of a love affair going bad, isHeinrich Hauser's first book. Hauser achieved fame some five years laterwhen he was invited to sail the four-masted bark Pamir from Hamburgto Talcahuano in Chili and subsequently issued a film and a book aboutthe 110-day voyage, both with the title Die letzten Segelschiffe.Hauser is the German translator of Liam O'Flaherty.

Donald C. Gallup, '34. Papers, including letters from T. S. Eliot toDonald Gallup, Arnold Bennett, R. Cobden-Seanderson, Harold Monro and others,and the setting typescript and proofs of The Use of Poetry and the Useof Criticism.

Yehuda Amichai, the Israeli poet who died on 22 September 2000,was born in Würzburg, Germany, in 1924 and immigrated in 1936 to Palestinewith his Orthodox Jewish family. After high school, he served in the Britisharmy during the Second World War, but later fought against the Britishas a member of the underground Jewish military organization in Palestine.He was also involved in the Arab-Israeli conflicts of 1948, 1956 and 1973.While teaching high school as a livelihood, he attended Hebrew University,where he studied literature and the Bible.

Amichai traced his vocation as a writer to his time stationed in Egyptwith the British army. There he chanced to find an anthology of modernBritish poetry, and the works of Dylan Thomas, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Audenincluded in that book inspired his first serious thoughts about becominga writer. Encouraged by one of his professors at Hebrew University, hepublished his first book of poetry, Now and in Other Days, in 1955.

Amichai's other works, which include plays, stories, novels, essays,and three children's books as well as numerous volumes of poetry, havebeen translated into more than thirty languages. Many are available inEnglish, including two books translated by Ted Hughes (Amen, 1977;and The early books,1998) and two volumes translated by his friendsBarbara and Benjamin Harshav of Yale University (Even a fist was oncean open palm with fingers, 1991; and Yehuda Amichai, a life of poetry,1948-1994, 1994).

The poetry of Yehuda Amichai has been praised for its depth and complexityas well as its accessibility, even in translation. His books were best-sellersin Israel, where in later years he enjoyed the status of a celebrity. Admiredfor its linguistic dexterity, Amichai's highly metaphorical verse is characterizedby wordplay, allusion, and shifting levels of diction, from the literaryto the colloquial. While his poetry reflects his lifelong political commitmentto the state of Israel, it is also deeply personal, drawing on his ownparticular experience of war, love, loss, mortality, and everyday life.The role of the poet, he said, was "to name each thing, each feeling, eachexperience, plainly and accurately, without pretense."

The archive comprises the entirety of the poet's extant papers. It includesdrafts, manuscripts, and corrected proofs for his collections of poems,including Time, Jerusalem poems, Great tranquillity, and Hourof grace, and for his writings for children. Among the personal papersare unpublished material (poems, stories, and plays), private diaries,notebooks (going back to the early 1950s), newspaper clippings, and photographs.There are many letters from organizations, among them P.E.N. and AmnestyInternational. Correspondents include Leonard Baskin, Paul Celan, JohnHollander, Irving Howe, Ted Hughes, Erica Jong, Teddy Kollek, GiancarloMenotti, Yitshak Navon, Amos Oz, Cynthia Ozick, Shimon Perez, Eduardo Sanguinetti,Anne Sexton, Alan Sillitoe, Charles Simic, and Charles Tomlinson.

Bestiaire, published in 72 copies, is the 31st and one of the last great creations of theself-published author and artist of the book Pierre Lecuire, born in 1922. It belongs to the oldtradition of the illustrated bestiary, represented in our century by Guillaume Apollinairewith Raoul Dufy and by Richard Wilbur with Alexander Calder, among manyothers. Here the short, elliptical poems by Lecuire, printed by FrançoisDa Ros, are accompanied by 35 drypoint etchings by the Breton artist Tal-Coat(1905-85). The cover shows a shell, and the book includes falcon, ravens,seagulls, cormorants, grouse, cats (eight plates), dog, wolf, porcupine,pike, owls, goats, rabbit, hens (some with butterflies), swan, ducks, geese,snails, and oysters (six plates). The painter died a few months beforethe publication of the book which, as a result, bears his stamp insteadof his signature.

The Americana and Virginiana from the estate of Paul Mellon is the largestgift ever received by the Beinecke Library in this field and also the finestin quality. Among its treasures are: