Special Collections Overview
Books Arts
The Book Arts collection contains a variety of materials in the History of the Book: a cuneiform tablet, fragments of papyri, medieval manuscript leaves, and printed materials from the 15th century to the 21st from the presses of Koberger, Aldus, Elzevier, Plantin, Strawberry Hill, Kelmscott, Roycrofters, Cuala and Black Sun. Two fine representatives from the collection are the Book of Hours and the German edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle. Examples of book illustrators, binders and papermakers may be found in the collection to illustrate aspects of the book arts.
Literature
Some of the outstanding literature collections include the Wilhelm Scherer collection of German literature with first editions of German authors and early periodicals such as Der Deutsche Merkur, the Haskell collection of illustrated Victorian literature with books illustrated by Cruikshank, Browne, Rackham and Tenniel, and the Bailey collection of titles by Thoreau. Collections of major authors of English, French, Spanish and American literature include titles from the 16th through the 21st centuries such as England’s Parnassus, Émile, Faust, Leaves of Grass, Cigarrales de Toledo and The Old Man and the Sea.
History of Science
In the History of Science collection one will find early editions of major works such as De Fabrica by Vesalius and Opticks by Newton as well as significant European and American journals. The Natural History materials include 220 plates of Audubon’s Birds of America, Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands and Travels of Lewis and Clark.
Autograph Letter Collections
An unusually fine collection of letters, manuscripts and documents form the letter collections representing primarily British and American literary, political and historical personalities. These manuscripts were donated by H. Jack Lang and Howard Garber as well as other collectors.
Fine Arts
Notable examples of music manuscripts and early printed books such as Musica Transalpina, L’Art du Facteur d’Orgues, Histoire de la Notation Musicale, and Orpheus Britannicus are available to researchers. In addition to significant books with woodcuts, plates, and engravings, the department has original works of art by William Sommer, Frank Wilcox, Abraham Warshawsky, Malvina Hoffman, William McVey and the Cleveland artists associated with the Work Projects Administration.
Cleveland and Northeast Ohio
Collections of local interest include first editions of books by Hart Crane, Charles Chesnutt, and Langston Hughes. Special Collections include the Housing and Planning Library of Ernest J. Bohn, papers of the Warner & Swasey Company, maker of precision machine tools and telescopes, and the Cleveland inventor, Charles F. Brush, who developed the arc light. Also available as a digital resource is the Rabbi Daniel Silver website. Compositions of internationally-known Cleveland composers Marcel Dick and Donald Erb are found here. Case Western Reserve University began as Western Reserve College in Hudson, Ohio, and the department holds most of the books that were part of the original collection in the College library before 1850 which were used to educate the doctors, lawyers and clergy of the Western Reserve.
Manuscripts
An unusually fine collection of manuscripts representing primarily British and American literary, political, and historical figures has been received from a number of donors. The Howard Garber Collection, H. Jack Lang Collection, and William Powell Jones Collection includes letters from Mms. de Sévigné, Voltaire, George III, Virginia Woolf, Sherwood Anderson, and John Steinbeck among others. In addition to the letter collections there are a Flemish Book of Hours from the fifteenth century and a Psalter.
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