Please address specific questions about the Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection to: Elisabeth Fairman‚ Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts 203 432 2814 203 432 9613 F elisabeth.fairman@yale.edu

Housing approximately 30‚000 titles, the Center’s collection of rare books and manuscripts focuses on material relating to the visual arts and cultural life in the United Kingdom and former British Empire from the sixteenth century to the present. Its particular strengths include illustrated "color-plate" books from the renowned Abbey collection‚ sporting books and manuscripts‚ early maps and atlases‚ art instruction and drawing manuals, archival and manuscript material relating to British artists of all periods, certain private press books—including a complete set of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press—as well as a growing collection of contemporary artists’ books. The core of the collection of illustrated books is the material amassed by Major J. R. Abbey‚ one of the first collectors of British color-plate books. Acquired as a whole by Paul Mellon in the 1950s‚ that collection comprises more than 2‚000 volumes describing British life‚ customs‚ scenery‚ and travel during the period 1770–1860. The often lavish illustrations in these books are the work of Britain’s finest landscape artists‚ including Paul Sandby‚ David Cox‚ John Constable‚ J. M. W. Turner‚ Samuel Prout‚ Thomas and William Daniell, and David Roberts. They form a coherent picture of local topography‚ architecture‚ and the sights encountered by British travelers on the Grand Tour in Europe and on more exotic travels to the South Seas‚ Africa‚ and India. The "Life" section of the Abbey collection includes works on such diverse subjects as satire and caricature‚ sports and pastimes‚ social conduct‚ etiquette‚ costume‚ the army and navy (including fortification designs and accounts of battles)‚ entertainments and theatrical events‚ music and dance‚ panoramas‚ transportation systems (roads‚ canals‚ railways)‚ natural history and popular science‚ illustrated children’s books and games‚ and toy theater. Major Abbey’s four-volume catalogue of this collection‚ originally published between 1952 and 1957‚ remains the standard bibliography‚ but additions have more than tripled the number of books in the original Abbey collection. In many cases they are works in the same or related subject areas; in others they duplicate titles already held‚ but with plates in different states‚ with extra illustrations‚ or in original wrappers with advertisements intact. Paul Mellon’s collection of sporting books and manuscripts came to the Center after his death in 1999. Described by John Podeschi in his 1981 volume Books on the horse and horsemanship, the group concentrates on books and manuscripts about the horse—riding, hunting, breeding, and racing—from 1400 to the present, although it also includes material on other sports and related subjects. One of the highlights is the Helmingham Herbal and Bestiary (England, ca. 1500), a pattern book consisting of 150 pen and ink and watercolor drawings of British plants and flowers as well as real and imaginary animals. The collection also contains key early maps and atlases. All the important British cartographers are represented and the great landmarks of cartography may be found, including several copies of Christopher Saxton's county atlas (one with a very rare early state of Queen Elizabeth’s frontispiece portrait), John Speed's Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, John Ogilby's Britannia, John Seller's English Pilot, a unique copy of Des Barres' Atlantic Neptune, as well as the first edition of the Ordnance Survey maps of Great Britain. The greatest of the cartographic treasures are the so-called "Brixen" globes, an extraordinary pair of terrestrial and celestial globes made for Sebastian Sperantius, ordained as bishop of Brixen around 1521-22. The terrestrial globe is the third oldest to survive and was likely executed by the astronomer and geographer Johann Schöner around 1522. The collection also includes important manuscript maps, including the earliest surviving map showing Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation (ca. 1587) on parchment and a map in pen and ink on paper detailing the southeastern part of North America (1721), ascribed to famous Indian fighter Colonel John 'Tuscarora Jack' Barnwell and likely the earliest English map of the southern frontier. Although the collection is particularly strong in 18th- and 19th- century imprints, it also includes some of the first books printed in the English language. There are thirteen books printed by William Caxton, as well as representative examples of other 15th- and 16th-century printers. The collection also includes some 1,300 individual leaves from illustrated incunables (books printed before 1501), most from books printed on the Continent. The collection contains much material that focuses upon the life and work of British artists, including hundreds of artists' manuals dating from 1600-1900. These range from simple drawing manuals to advanced treatises on technique, perspective, optics, pigments, anatomy, and aesthetic theory. Some copies were owned by artists and contain their annotations. The department has recently acquired a number of nineteenth century watercolor boxes with their original paints, as well as a camera lucida (a brass instrument with a lens used for drawing, made around 1820), and a zograscope of the late 18th-century. This table-top optical device, consisting of a wooden stand supporting a hinged mirror and lens, was used for viewing certain topographical prints in perspective. Archival and manuscript material in the collection includes letters, journals, and account books by artists, including Sir Joshua Reynolds (bequeathed to the Center in 1973 by Frederick W. Hilles), Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, David Roberts, James Ward, A.W.N. Pugin, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and Vanessa Bell. The extensive James Bruce archive contains journals, letters, drawings, and watercolors relating to his 18th-century expedition undertaken to discover the source of the Nile. Ron King and his wife Willow Legge recently donated the archive of Circle Press to the Center in memory of their son Daniel. This extraordinary collection includes drawings, plans, prototypes, correspondence, posters, linoleum blocks, cutting and creasing formes related to projects published, printed, or created by or for the Press since its inception in 1967. Computerized cataloging of the Center's rare books and manuscripts is in progress. Records for the most of the collection are on ORBIS—Yale University Library’s on-line catalogue—and provide detailed access by author, title, subjects, artists and engravers, techniques of illustration, publishers and printers, place of publication, provenance, and bookbinder. Questions about holdings may be directed to the Curator.