First Books in the Anne Spencer Collection!

The Library is so happy to announce the newest Personal Libraries Library Collection, that of poet, civil-rights activist and gardener Anne Spencer. The first book of the Spencer Collection is Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, pictured above, and also found in the Borges Collection.

The first acquisitions to the Anne Spencer Personal Library reflect her varied interests and place within American literature:

Star-Land by Sir Robert Stawell Ball
Wild Flowers Every Child Should Know by Frederic William Stack
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Magic Portholes by Helen Follett
House Plants: Their Care & Culture by Hugh Findlay

Pictured above are the endpapers to Follett's Magic Portholes; incredible woodcuts pepper the novel.

Below is the title page spread for The Story of Light by Jeanette Eaton:

Eaton's The Story of Light is joined by,
United States Postal Policy by Clyde Kelly
The White Stag by Kate Seredy
Enough Rope: Poems by Dorothy Parker
Birds in Town & Village by W.H. Hudson

and,
Good-bye to All That by Robert Graves
Knickerbocker's History of New York, Two Volumes, by Washington Irving
Geology, Physical & Historical by H. Cleland
Bird Neighbors by Neltje Blanchan
The Story of Language by Mario Pei

Bird Neighbors includes countless images of birds; these birds are obviously stuffed and are strangely arranged on branches and foliage in front of painted backdrops.

For any questions about the Library, Collections or books (including the new Anne Spencer Collection!), please contact the Librarian at personallibraries{at}gmail{dot}com. 

New Acquisitions to the Borges, Calvino & Smithson Libraries!

It seems that every day finds a book, or more, on the Library's doorstep. Pictured above are just a few of the newest acquisitions to the Borges, Calvino and Smithson Collections. Included in the new acquisitions are:

Robert Smithson Personal Library:
Thoreau as World Traveler by John Aldrich Christie, Crystals: Their Role in Nature by Charles Bunn, Roland Barthes' Elements of Semiology and The Origin of the Zodiac by Rupert Gleadow.

Italo Calvino Personal Library:
Specimen Days and Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, That Awful Mess on Via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda and James Joyce's Ulysses.

Jorge Luis Borges Personal Library:
Snorri Sturlisson's Egils Saga, Heroes & Hero Worship by Thomas Carlyle, A Change of Light and Other Stories by Julio Cortazar, Andre Gide's The Counterfeiters and Marco Polo's Travels.


This beautiful edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass is found in both the Calvino & Borges Libraries. It is a "Book of the Month" Book illustrated with expressive lithographs. Also found in the book was the following printed matter- all letterpress printed- which has found its way to the Personal Libraries Library Archive.


James Joyce's Ulysses is also in both the Calvino and Borges Collections. Both wrote extensively about this novel, at one point Borges wrote, "Perhaps, for the future, the only achievement of "modern" literature will be the unfathomable Ulysses, which in some way justifies, includes, and goes beyond the other texts." (Selected Non-Fictions, 312.) Possibly Borges found this book disconcerting.


Lastly, is this sweet edition of Thomas Carlyle's On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History. Carlyle is particularly interesting to the PLL, as he opened the amazing London Library in London in the 1840s. The London Library remains the "largest independent membership library in the world." (Patience & Fortitude, Nicholas Basbanes, 207.) Finding Carlyle as a kindred spirit whose labors made the PLL possible, his mini-tome is quite special.