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Rare Book Gifts and Acquisitions

2012; Rutgers University Libraries; Volume: 48; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.14713/jrul.v48i1.1656

2331-3781

Janice A. Kraus,

This year Special Collections and Archives has acquired several significant rare books in a variety of fields. 1 Many fall within the traditionally enunciated collecting areas at Rutgers; some are a slight departure.The rare book collection has been assessed to have potential in the areas of American (especially New Jersey) history; American and English literature (and included here is a growing collection of dictionaries) ; the natural sciences, especially botany; and accounts of visitors to foreign lands.In this last, important works in the collection are the reports of missionaries who labored in the Far East and the Americas, especially the Jesuits who were the most prolific writers of their experiences.In addition, there has been a new effort to purchase volumes or tracts produced by early masterprinters and books notable for their beauty.These are artifacts of the early period of printing and may be regarded as art objects as much as monuments to intellectual history.Two such volumes, as renowned for their beauty as for their contents, are the Epistolae of Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481), printed in Venice ca.1473 by the distinguished Vindelinus da Spira; and Girolamo Squarciafico's 1481 edition of the works of Flavius Josephus, printed in Venice by Reynaldus de Novimagio.Both volumes call to mind the highly-charged intellectual and economic atmosphere prevailing in fifteenth-century Venice, where printers allied themselves with eminent scholars and artists to produce textually reliable, elegant volumes.Francesco Filelfo's letters, of which this volume is the first edition, reveal the many facets of a man who in his life combined great learning with the obsequious pettiness of a Renaissance courtier.Filelfo had received the usual humanistic education in Padua, Venice and Vicenza; he furthered his knowledge by spending seven years (1420-27) in Constantinople studying Greek under the tutelage of John Chrysoloras (and married Chrysoloras' daughter Theodora).This interest in Greek led to Filelfo's lifelong acqui-1 The majority of the acquisitions for this year were purchased with money from the Charles H. ('25) and Mary Elizabeth Brower Fund.Therefore, unless otherwise specified, it may be assumed that the volumes highlighted here were bought from that fund.On behalf of Special Collections and Archives, I would like to express here our appreciation to the Brower family.