 |
SELECTED RECENT ACQUISITIONS
2001
- Giovanni Villani. Cronica . Florence, 14th century and Florence, 15th century.
Two illuminated manuscripts of this important fourteenth-century chronicle of Florence. The earlier copy, on paper, is from the Feltrinelli collection. The later manuscript, on parchment and preserved in its original stamped leather binding, is a compendium of books 2 through 9 of Villani's work. The excerptor eliminated those parts of the original work that were not strictly about Florence.
- Jerome. Epistolae . Florence, 1464.
An illuminated manuscript on parchment preserving a collection of ninety-six of the Epistles and other treatises of St. Jerome. The manuscript is signed by the scribe, Domenico de Attavanti, and dated 1464. Domenico apparently copied the manuscript for the family library, as it bears the coat of arms of the Attavanti family of Florence.
- Incunable editions of Aristotle.
Among the important influences on Renaissance thought were the rediscovery, study, and dissemination of the works of Aristotle. Editions of Aristotle's works and commentaries on them are the focus of this collection of twenty-nine fifteenth-century printed books. The books range in date from 1473 to 1500, and the majority were printed in Venice. Other cities represented include Florence, Brescia, Pavia, and Basel. The collection documents in considerable depth the range of Aristotle's works as well as the Renaissance response to his works.
- Thomas Morley. The first booke of balletts to five voyces . London, “1595.”
This important Elizabethan song book by the “father of the English madrigal school” is complete for all five voices. Though bearing the date of the first edition of 1595, this is a copy of the edition with crown watermarks that dates to about 1606.
Early English books
-
The secrete of secretes (London, 1572; stc 770.3). The second surviving edition of this translation by Robert Copland of the educational manual then attributed to Aristotle, hitherto recorded in a single, imperfect copy.
Bound with: The secrets of Albertus Magnus. Of the vertues of herbes, stones, and certain beasts. Whereunto is newly added, a short discourse of the seven planets governing the nativities of children. Also a booke of the same author, of the merveilous things of the world, and of certaine things caused of certaine beasts (London, 1637; STC 267). A translation of the Liber aggregationis , supposedly by Albertus Magnus; the last of eleven recorded editions, hitherto known in six copies.
Bound with: The knowledge of things unknowne; shewing the effects of the planets, and other astronomicall constellations: with the strange events that befall men, women, and children, borne under them. Compiled by Godfrius super palladium de agricultura Anglicarum. Together with the husbandsmans practice, or prognostications for ever: as teacheth Albert, Alkind, and Prolome (London, 1639; stc 11934). Only known complete copy of this printing of a very popular text, illustrated with a woodcut frontispiece and seven small woodcuts.
Bound with: Thomas Hill. Naturall and artificiall conclusions. Compiled first in Latine, by the worthiest and best authors, both of the famous University of Padua in Italy, and divers other places Englished since, and set forth by Thomas Hill, Londoner, whose own experiments in this kinde, were held most excellent. And now againe published, with a new addition of rarities, for the practise of sundry artificers; as also to recreate wits withall at vacant times (London, 1650; Wing H2018). Fourth surviving edition, augmented, of the first English book containing conjuring tricks; only recorded in two complete copies.
Bound with: Walter Rumsey. Organon salutis. An instrument to cleanse the stomach, as also divers new experiments of the virtue of tobacco and coffee: how much they conduce to preserve humane health (London, 1657; Wing R2280). First edition of the author's only book, one of the first English books to discuss coffee.
- Friedrich Logau. Epithalamion . Breslau, 1636.
This marriage poem for Joachim von Niemitz and Anna Helene von Bebran is Logau's first separate publication, unrecorded in the pertinent bibliographies. A Silesian by birth, Logau was famous in his day for his mastery of the epigram, the form in which he principally wrote.
Game books
- Arthur Saul. The famous game of chesse play. Being a princely exercise; wherein the learner may profit more by reading of this small booke, then by playing of a thousand mates. Now augmented of many materiall things formerly wanting, and beautified with a threefold methode, viz. of the chesse-men, of the chesse-play, of the chesse-lawes (London, 1652; Wing S729A).
Bound with: The royal game of the ombre (London, 1665: Wing R2130B). And with: Thomas Master. Mensa lubrica; anglicè shovel-board [ca. 1650-60?].
The first title is the rarest of early editions of the first chess manual by an Englishman: of this printing only one other complete copy is known. The second title is the first book on the game of Ombre, popularized by Queen Catherine of Braganza, and later immortalized by Alexander Pope in The rape of the lock . This is the second edition, known in one copy in the British Library. The third title is an unrecorded printing of a Latin poem on the game of shove—or shovel-board by a fellow of New College, Oxford.
- Franz Ritter. Speculum solis . Nuremberg, 1660.
A treatise on sun dials, illustrated with elaborate woodcuts and folding charts. First published in 1609, this second, expanded version was edited by Georg Philipp Harsdörffer, one of the principal mid-seventeenth-century poets and literary figures of Nuremberg. The work is bound with Philipp Uffenbach's De quadratura circuli mechanici (1653), on squaring the circle, also illustrated. Both titles were printed by Paul Fürst in Nuremberg.
Frankliniana from the Laird Park Collection
- A treaty held at the town of Lancaster... by the provinces of Virginia and Maryland, with the Indians of the Six Nations, in June, 1744 (Philadelphia, 1744). Printed by Franklin, the third of thirteen Indian treaties issued by his press.
The friendly instructor; or, a companion for young ladies and young gentlemen: in which their duties to God and their parents, their carriage to superiors and inferiors, and several other very useful and instructive lessons, are recommended. In plain and familiar dialogues. With a recommendatory preface, by the Rev. Dr. Doddington (Philadelphia, 1750). Sixth edition of this instructional chapbook for children, printed by Franklin. This copy, though incomplete, is the only one known.
Trading with America at the end of the 18th century
This collection of 118 Scottish reprints of orders made in council in the presence of the king or the privy council concerns, among other topics, trade with America, Africa, and the Caribbean, quarantine measures, whaling, and shipping embargoes (1786-94). Some documents bear the signature of customs officials and their annotations. One of these officials is Richard Elliston Philips, who was secretary of the Scottish Board of Customs and a close associate of Adam Smith—who was himself one of the five commissioners from 1777 until his appointment as lord rector of Glasgow in 1787. Philips (who died at the age of 104) and Smith are buried in the same grave in the Canongate kirkyard.
Literary anthologies and almanacs
- The German Literature Collection contains an extensive and growing collection of literary almanacs and yearbooks, especially publications of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth. These books, usually small in format and often exquisitely illustrated, are a rich source of information about popular literature and style at the time.
- Berlinischer Damen Kalender auf das Jahr 1800 . Edited by Sophie Mereau, with several stories, poems, and translations from her pen, eight copper-plate illustrations by Chodowiecki, a fashion page, a frontispiece portrait of Queen Luise of Prussia, and one song setting, by Goethe's friend Zelter.
- Poetisches Taschenbuch für das Jahr 1806, edited by Friedrich Schlegel, with contributions by him, by his wife Dorothea, and several others. With six sheets of music.
- F. Rzehula. Jux fexirbuch . Prague, ca. 1840.
This unusual hand-colored flip book was designed for the nineteenth-century magician. The volume can be thumbed in several places, and in both directions. The illustrations form several series, including playing cards, costumed figures, and birds.
- Peter Cunningham. The Story of Nell Gwyn and the Sayings of Charles the Second . London, 1852.
Extra illustrated copy with numerous letters and documents, including a document signed by Nell Gwyn, referring to the support of her son, the first Duke of St. Albans, by his father Charles II; an unrecorded printed playbill for a performance of Vanbrugh's The Provok'd Wife , with David Garrick and Mrs. Cibber; and about sixty additional autograph letters and documents, by Queen Hen-rietta Maria, Joseph Addison, James Boswell, and many others.
Frederick & Florence Marryat papers
This collection of papers relating to the popular early-Victorian novelist Frederick, known as “Captain” Marryat and his daughter Florence comprises an album in which are pasted letters from Marryat and to him, including letters from William and Thomas Longman, Richard Bentley, William Harrison Ainsworth. The items relating to Florence Marryat include two autograph letters, signed, from Charles Dickens (6 August 1867 and 29 March 1869), and letters from Hamilton Aïdé, George Bentley, Randolph Caldecott, Wilkie Collins, Blanchard Jerrold, Harry Furniss, John Murray, Ouida, Charles Reade, Charlotte Riddell, George Augustus Sala, John Tenniel, and Edmund Yates. Additional material documents Florence Marryat's work for the theater and her career as a literary recitalist and includes notebooks, source material, original artwork, photographs, and ephemera. Also in the collection are letters to Richard Bentley from Edward Bulwer Lytton, Anthony Trollope, and Frances Trollope.
Through a different source, but from the same provenance, the Beinecke has also just acquired the holograph manuscript of a large portion of an unpublished early draft of Frederick Marryat's Joseph Rushbrook; or, The poacher, serialized in The era from December 1840 to May 1841 and published in book form in 1841.
- Theodor Fontane. Balladen . Berlin, 1861.
- _____. Der Stechlin . Berlin, 1899.
Fontane (1819-98) began his career as a novelist late in life, publishing the first of his fifteen works of fiction at age 59. They were preceded by a career in the military and as a journalist and by several travel books, including one about London, published in 1854. Der Stechlin, the story of an aging, widowed Prussian aristocrat and his son, has little plot but is greatly admired for its nuanced characterization, political insight, and masterful use of dialogue.
- George Eliot. Essays, printed versions with manuscript corrections, ca. 1880.
This bound volume—one of the last important George Eliot manuscripts likely to appear on the market—comprises offprints of seven of her essays, published in the Westminster Review and other periodicals, with manuscript revisions in her hand with a view to a republication in volume. The work was probably undertaken towards the end of her life but not completed. All seven essays were included in the posthumous Essays and leaves from a notebook (Edinburgh and London, 1884), edited by her stepson and executor Charles Lewes, but her revisions were not all taken into account.
- Emil Pirchan. Wein-Wunder. Ein Spiel in Sinntänzen. Berlin, 1918.
_____. Josephslegende . Berlin, 1922.
_____. Mensalströme . Munich 1923.
Three titles illustrated by the author, artist, and theater designer Emil Pirchan (1884-1957). The second shows Pirchan's designs for the Berlin production of the ballet Josephs Legende on a text by Hugo von Hofmannsthal with music by Richard Strauss.
- Oscar Kokoschka. Der gefesselte Columbus . Berlin, 1921.
This famous twentieth-century painter also produced literary works, most of them plays in the Expressionist style, written while he was in his thirties. Columbus in Chains is a series of twelve lithographs with a prose text by the artist. Cnefelius Fund.
- Else Lasker-Schüler. Theben . Berlin, 1923.
Else Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945) was a member of the Berlin avant-garde before her emigration in 1933. By 1937 she had settled in Palestine, where she died in poverty. Her letters to Kurt Wolff, decorated with crowns drawn in colored pencil (she always addressed him as “the king”) are part of the Kurt Wolff papers at Beinecke. Theben is a volume of poems and ten lithographs, signed by the poet/artist.
- Erik Satie. Recitatives for Gounod's Le médecin malgré lui , holograph manuscript, 1924.
For the 1924 season of the Ballets russes at the Monte-Carlo Opera, Serge Diaghilev had the pioneering idea of reviving classic French opéras-comiques of the preceding centuries in arrangements by avant-garde composers: Gounod's La colombe was entrusted to Francis Poulenc (and to Juan Gris for the sets and costumes) Chabrier's Une éducation manquée to Darius Milhaud; and Gounod's Le médecin malgré lui to Erik Satie, a more exotic choice.
Gounod's work, a close adaptation of Molière's 1666 farce by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, had always been a connoisseur's favorite since its premiere in 1858. The manuscript of Satie's version reveals that he received assistance from the young Georges Auric, in whose hand part of the manuscript is written; there are also a few annotations by Serge Lifar. Performances took place at Monte-Carlo on January 5 and 12, 1924, but Satie's work has remained unpublished. The manuscript has now joined that of the original Gounod, which is part of the Frederick R. Koch collection.
- Georges Hugnet. Enfances . Paris, 1933.
The surrealist poet Georges Hugnet (1906-74), a lifelong friend of Virgil Thomson, was introduced by him to Gertrude Stein in 1926 and for the next five years was a devoted member of her entourage. The poetic cycle Enfances , written in 1930, put a definitive end to their friendship. Stein decided to translate it into English—“Stein English” in Thomson's words—, Hugnet objected to her adaptation being called translation, and she took terminal offence at his objections. Stein's version first appeared in the magazine Pagany in 1931 under the title “Poem Pritten on Pfances of Georges Hugnet” and in book form later in the same year under the title (dear to Donald Gallup) Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded .
The original French was the last to come out: it was published by Christian Zervos's Cahiers d'Art Editions, illustrated with three etchings by Joan Miró. Of the 129 copies announced in the colophon, it appears that few were actually printed, hence the book's extraordinary rarity.
- Hermann Broch. Die Schuldlosen. Munich, 1950.
Die Schuldlosen (The guiltless) is Broch's last book, a novel loosely composed of short stories, some of them written and published much earlier. This set of corrected proofs represents a state of the work between the proofs already in the Beinecke collection and the finished book. Broch gave these proofs to his friend Hermann J. Weigand, professor of German literature at Yale and the person who invited Broch to New Haven when poor health made it difficult for him to stay in Princeton. Broch added a handwritten dedicatory birthday poem for Weigand, which turns on the fact that both Hermanns were born under the sign of Scorpio.
- Goethe. Prométhée . Paris, 1951.
The first edition of Gide's translation of Goethe's dramatic fragment, with eight original color lithographs and six lithographed initials and tail-pieces by Henry Moore, his first large-scale book illustrations. The drawings were executed between 1948 and 1950. One of 165 numbered copies on Vélin du Marais.
- Jean-Paul Sartre. The Bauer manuscript.
In 1964, the American scholar George H. Bauer bought in Paris a collection of manuscripts by Sartre that turned out to include the holographs of La mort dans l'âme, the third novel of the trilogy Les chemins de la liberté (the manuscript of the second, Le sursis , was already at Yale), and, even more importantly, substantial drafts of an unfinished fourth one, originally entitled “Drôle d'amitié,” then “La dernière chance.” The collection, which also comprises miscellaneous shorter manuscripts and correspondence, was acquired from Mr. Bauer's widow.
April
“We are especially pleased to honor our friend Walter Pforzheimer in this tercentennial year,” says Vincent Giroud, curator of modern books and manuscripts at the Beinecke. “Few collectors have contributed so richly to so many different areas of the library's holdings. The Pforzheimer Molière collection bids fair to be the finest in private hands and now makes Yale the best Molière library outside France.”
The Beinecke Library was recently the recipient of an extraordinary gift of more than 15,000 books and some 46 linear feet of manuscript material from an alumnus whose support of the Yale Library spans nearly seven decades. Walter L. Pforzheimer, Class of 1935, began collecting in earnest during his student years, when he was taught by Yale's legendary Chauncey Brewster Tinker, mentor to such great collectors as Paul Mellon and Donald Gallup, to writers like Thornton Wilder, and to illustrious scholars such as William K. Wimsatt. Walter Pforzheimer was the first undergraduate member of the then newly formed Yale Library Associates. Elected to the governing board of that organization after his graduation from Yale, he is its longest-serving trustee.
Mr. Pforzheimer comes from a family of bookmen. His uncle Carl Pforzheimer collected Shelley and his circle (a collection now at the New York Public Library), while his father, Walter, amassed two extraordinary groups of books: a virtually complete collection of Molière covering the 300-year publication history of the great French playwright, and a collection of French armorial bindings, books specially bound for the private libraries of kings, nobles, and churchmen, each volume an exquisite artifact that brings text, provenance, and craftsmanship into a unique historical relationship. The collection's finest treasure is one of the bindings from the library of the renowned sixteenth-century bibliophile Jean Grolier.
Walter Pforzheimer the son inherited his father's library, conserved and augmented it, and added to it two outstanding collections of his own. While still in secondary school, he began collecting the Philadelphia-born novelist, short-story writer, and humorist Frank Stockton (1834-1902). He pursued this interest at Yale and over the years developed an exhaustive gathering of materials that cover Stockton's work as an illustrator, author, and editor.
Soon after his graduation from Yale Law School, Walter Pforzheimer helped organize various OSS operations, which led to work in Air Force Intelligence, and then to a distinguished career with the CIA. The collector kept pace: from the beginning Walter Pforzheimer began to form his great collection on intelligence service. This definitive assemblage of materials contains not only manuscripts, official documents, and historical materials, but also fiction and biography relating to intelligence and espionage, ranging chronologically from the American Revolution to the Cold War. Included are a letter by George Washington citing the need for intelligence, documents relating to the British spy Major John André, and materials concerning the Dreyfus Affair. Walter Pforzheimer is the author of Bibliography of Intelligence Literature .
|
