What's new in Special Collections is the theme of the fall exhibit on view September 21-December 31 on the second floor of the Bing Wing. In a typical year, Stanford Libraries adds close to two thousand linear feet of original
manuscripts and archives as well as hundreds of rare books to its collections. The new
exhibit, Recent Arrivals: Rare Books, Manuscripts & Archives,
opening on Monday, September 21, displays some of the most notable
gifts and purchases of the past five years, across a broad spectrum of subject areas.
Book highlights include the copy of Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and
My Freedom (1855) that Douglass inscribed to the woman who ransomed him
from slavery, from the collection of late Professor of English Jay
Fliegelman; a 1468 illuminated Latin manuscript of Jacob de Voragine’s
Legenda Aurea; Lewis and Clark’s History of the Expedition . . . to the
Sources of the Missouri (1814) which contains a celebrated map drawn by
Clark that provided the first accurate depiction of the sources of the
Columbia and Missouri rivers; and several rare Hebraica volumes
purchased from the private Valmadonna Trust Library, including two
works by sixteenth-century authors that are held by only a handful of
libraries worldwide.
Manuscript and University Archives collections represented span the
persecution of French Huguenots to the literary expression of the San
Francisco Beats. Notable items include a diary recounting a Protestant
family’s harrowing escape from France in 1687, from the Champagné
Papers; photographs by experimental filmmaker Jack Smith (1932–1989),
and correspondence between Irving Rosenthal (1930–) and William
Burroughs (1914–1997) concerning editing and publication of Burroughs’
Naked Lunch, from the Irving Rosenthal Papers; and artwork for the
Stanford Memorial Church mosaics produced by the Venetian glass firm A.
Salviati & Co., ca. 1899–1901.
Recent Arrivals: Rare Books, Manuscripts & Archives opens Monday, September 21, in the Peterson Gallery and Munger Rotunda on the second floor of the Bing Wing of Green Library. The exhibition continues through December 31, 2009 and is free and open to the public. Exhibit cases are illuminated Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 6 p.m. The gallery is accessible whenever Green Library is open.
