In 1992 the Houghton Library celebrated fifty years of preeminence with an exhibition devoted to its riches. This work catalogs an astonishing range of books, manuscripts, and curiosities: a miniature stage set made for a 1975 Mabou Mines production of Samuel Beckett's play "The Lost Ones"; manuscript scores and first editions of works by Faure, Schumann, and Beethoven, among others; pathbreaking prints from the hands of Piranesi and Delacroix; drawings and manuscript items from such figures as Edward Lear, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Ben Shahn; remarkable examples of medieval manuscripts and...

The career of historian, bibliographer, and librarian George Parker Winship (1871-1952) combined curatorship and scholarship to a degree that seems remarkable today. As librarian and curator at Brown and later at Harvard, he championed the primacy of the role of rare books in American higher education. As a connoisseur and printer, he played an active role in promulgating enthusiasm for fine printing among collectors and readers in the early twentieth century. Through his teaching at Harvard College, he inspired a generation of bibliophiles. This slim, elegant volume collects three talks...