Collection
The library now contains approximately 400,000 rare books, 6.5 million manuscripts, and 100,000 pieces of sheet music.
The library's holdings are particularly strong in British and American history and literature, Latin Americana, medicine and science, food and drink, children's literature, fine printing and binding, popular music, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, and early printing. Notable items in the library's collections include the New Testament of the Gutenberg Bible, the first printed collection of Shakespeare's works, Audubon's Birds of America, one of 25 extant copies of the "First Printing of the Declaration of Independence" (also known as the "Dunlap Broadside") that was printed in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, George Washington's letter accepting the presidency of the United States, Abraham Lincoln's desk from his law office, a leaf from the famous Abraham Lincoln "Sum Book" ca. 1824-1826, Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son, the manuscripts of Robert Burns's "Auld Lang Syne", the Boxer Codex, J. M. Synge's "The Playboy of the Western World", and J. M. Barrie's "Peter Pan", and typescripts of many of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels. The library also owns the papers of Hollywood directors Orson Welles and John Ford, the poets Sylvia Plath and Ezra Pound, and authors Edith Wharton and Upton Sinclair.
The library also holds the Boxer Codex, a manuscript written c. 1595 which contains illustrations of ethnic groups in the Philippines at the time of their initial contact with the Spaniards.
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Famous quotes containing the word collection:
“Bolkenstein, a Minister, was speaking on the Dutch programme from London, and he said that they ought to make a collection of diaries and letters after the war. Of course, they all made a rush at my diary immediately. Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the “Secret Annexe.” The title alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story.”
—Anne Frank (1929–1945)
“The society would permit no books of fiction in its collection because the town fathers believed that fiction ‘worketh abomination and maketh a lie.’”
—For the State of Rhode Island, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings—they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong.”
—Norman Douglas (1868–1952)