Rare Books and Manuscripts
Contact: Tony Bliss
Scope of Collection
Copies of the complete Rare Books collection policy (pre-1815 and post-1815) can be supplied on request.
Requests for use of this collection come from many departments including English, History, all the European language departments, Art History, Classics, Comparative Literature, Medieval Studies, African American Studies, Drama.
Date span of collection: 400 BC to the present.
Collection exclusions: music, law, medicine, and non-western languages.
Primary Languages and Formats
Languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Latin, Greek, Demotic Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic.
Formats: Printed books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera, maps; papyri; medieval manuscripts; historical and literary manuscripts and archives; photographs, posters, drawings, prints; A/V; printing equipment.
Strengths
Papyri, Medieval manuscripts, incunabula, 16th-century scholar printers, Horace, Milton, the Enlightenment, French revolution, drama (especially English, French, Italian, and Spanish 16th-19th centuries), post-World War II Bay Area poetry, West Coast Beat scene, the art and history of the book.
Special Collections
Hermann Hesse collection; Bransten coffee and tea collection; Kipling collection; Koundakjian collection of American wit and humor; Bascom Yoruba collection (Nigeria); Setchell tobacco collection; Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft collection, African American writers. See also "Strengths" above.
Related Collections
The rare book collection complements material in many areas of Doe (Main) Library.
More
For information about research tools, library guides, and related pages, see Bancroft Library.
