Subject Guides: Special Collections: Rare Books Collection: Rare Books @ Trexler Library

Trexler Library’s Rare Books Collection is broad and serves as an excellent representative collection for teaching the history of books and printing. It includes cuneiform tablets and papyrus, several 15th-century manuscript leaves, four incunabula, a fine selection of 16th- & 17th-century Lutheran Bibles and texts, a wide-ranging selection of 19th-century British and American literature and travel narratives, modern first editions, and examples from the literary canon.

For more information about how to search Trexler Library's catalog for items in the Rare Books Collection, click here.
For more information on the Rare Book Collection, and other Special Collections at Trexler Library, see the About Us page on the Library Special Collections web page.
For access to items in the Rare Books Collection, please contact Susan Falciani Maldonado.

Highlights from the Rare Books Collection

The North American Indian : being a series of volumes picturing and describing the Indians of the United States, and Alaska by Edward S Curtis
Call Number: T 572.897 C978
Publication Date: 1907-1930
Muhlenberg copy is no.135. Only 272 of the 500 sets were completed. Autograph of Curtis in v.1.

Muhlenberg's copy was acquired from the estate of Harry C. Trexler in 1936. Original copy of the subscription agreement dated June 19, 1911 and signed by Harry C. Trexler is in the Morgan Library. Citation: Subscription Form #135. Edward S. Curtis Papers, Box 1, Folder 8. Archives of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.
The complaint, and the consolation; or, Night thoughts. by Edward Young [William Blake]
Call Number: RBK 821.5 Y71c, 1797
Publication Date: 1797
One of only 25 hand-illuminated copies of William Blake's large-format edition of "Night Thoughts."
[Cuneiform tablets]; [representing business documents in use about 2350-538 B.C.] by unidentified
Call Number: T 935 C972t
Publication Date: B.C.E.
Tablets 1 and 2 are from Drehem ca. 2350 B.C. and are receipts for livestock. Tablet 3 is a large contract tablet, burned to a black color, found at Babylon, perhaps ca 538 B.C. when Persia captured and burned the town. Tablets 4-6 are undated. Tablet 4 is cone shaped.
Publii Ovidii Nasonis epistolarum Heroidum by Ovid
Call Number: RBK 871 O96e
Publication Date: 1485
One of four incunabula held by Trexler Library.
Panta sözomena. Archimedis opera quae extant. by Archimedes
Call Number: RBK 513 A673
Publication Date: 1615
The most influential seventeenth century edition of Archimedes' complete works. The book contains the Greek text with facing Latin translation and has extensive and detailed commentaries by Rivault.

Librarian

Kristen Leipert

Curtis, "The North American Indian"

Blake, "Night Thoughts"

Cuneiform tablets