Library and Art Collection
The library contains an extensive collection of rare books and manuscripts, including a Gutenberg Bible, the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer, and thousands of historical documents about Abraham Lincoln, including the papers of his bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon. The rare books and manuscripts in the library are among the most heavily used in the United States. The library holds some 6.5 million manuscripts and more than a million rare books. It is the only library in the world with the first two quartos of Hamlet; it holds the manuscript of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, the first seven drafts of Henry David Thoreau's Walden, John James Audubon's Birds of America, a collection of manuscripts and first editions of the works of Charles Bukowski, and many other great treasures.
The library often places these and similar items on view for the general public. Actual use of the collection is extremely restricted, generally requiring a doctoral degree or at least candidacy for the Ph.D. and two letters of recommendation from known scholars. The research division of the Huntington grants a number of short and long term fellowships each year to scholars wishing to work with the collections.
Read more about this topic: Huntington Library
Famous quotes containing the words library and, library, art and/or collection:
“With sighs more lunar than bronchial,
Howbeit eluding fallopian diagnosis,
She simpers into the tribal library and reads
That Keats died of tuberculosis . . .”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.”
—Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)
“Architecture might be more sportive and varied if every man built his own house, but it would not be the art and science that we have made it; and while every woman prepares food for her own family, cooking can never rise beyond the level of the amateur’s work.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
“No collection of people who are all waiting for the same thing are capable of holding a natural conversation. Even if the thing they are waiting for is only a taxi.”
—Ben Elton (b. 1959)