Home

The Bibliographical Society of America

The oldest scholarly society in North America dedicated to the study of books and manuscripts as physical objects


Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is the Internet's oldest producer of free electronic books (eBooks or etexts). Thanks to ibiblio, the Public's Library and Digital Archive, for hosting the main eBook distribution site.

The Official Project Gutenberg Web pages may be found at www.gutenberg.net. The official Web pages include award-winning information about Project Gutenberg, including how help create free eBooks and how to subscribe to the Project Gutenberg newsletter for announcements of each month's new eBooks and other happenings.


Book Gilt

Book meta–search engine

  • Responsive design. This means that BookGilt is designed to work brilliantly across desktop computers, tablets and phones.
  • No PODs. We filter out PODs by default.
  • Saved search preferences. BookGilt will remember your search preferences the next time you return.
  • Save lists. When you create a BookGilt account, you can save books you find to lists for future retrieval.
  • Want lists. You can maintain up to five wants and we'll search for those items every day for you, notifying you by email when we find a copy.

  • Swann Galleries

    Swann Galleries was founded in 1941 as an auction house specializing in Rare Books. Today they are the largest specialist rare book auctioneers in the world, and our business has expanded to encompass the Visual Arts.


    The American Language Reprint Series

    The American Language Reprint (ALR) series aims to compile the various word-lists, vocabularies and phrase books which were collected in the early years of North American settlement. The series begins with the languages and dialects of the Eastern Woodlands, with a primary emphasis on the Eastern Algonquian and Iroquoian families. We hope to progressively extend the geographical scope of the project to form a comprehensive linguistic record of native North America prior to the advent of modern linguistics.


    Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

    Collection Summary Creator: Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, 1793-1864 Title: Papers of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft 1788-1941 (bulk 1820-1856) Size: 25,000 items; 90 containers plus 1 oversize; 28 linear feet; 69 microfilm reels Repository: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress Abstract: Author, ethnologist, explorer, geologist, glass manufacturer, and Indian agent. Correspondence, journals, articles, books, manuscripts of magazines, poetry, speeches, government reports, Indian vocabularies, maps, drawings, and other papers reflecting Schoolcraft's career as a glass manufacturer, mineralogist on an exploring expedition in the Ozark Mountains, geologist on the Cass expedition to the Northwest Territory, leader of expeditions throughout the Great Lakes region, member of Michigan's legislative council, Indian agent, superintendent of Indian affairs for Michigan, ethnologist, and author of works concerning the Iroquois of New York state and other Indians of North America.


    The Lucile Project

    The Lucile project is an attempt to recover the publishing history of a single 19th century book. Owen Meredith's Lucile was first published in 1860, by Chapman & Hall in England and as a Ticknor & Fields "Blue & Gold" in the United States. It was reviewed in the New York Times, as well as other newspapers and magazines. In England, it saw only a handful of editions over the next 40 years. In the United States, however, it remained in print until 1938, last offered as a surviving title in Burt's Home Library remaindered to Blue Ribbon Books in 1936. It went out of print in 1938.


    Zamora 80

    In 1945 the Zamorano Club published The Zamorano 80: A Selection of Distinguished California Books Made by Members of the Zamorano Club. The criterion for inclusion was that a selection above all should be distinguished, and that rarity and importance would be secondary. Yet, over time, it appears that the eighty books selected are both distinguished and important, and a number of them are definitely rare. The Club's goal was to choose those books considered cornerstones of a serious collection of Californiana. The books listed in The Zamorano 80 for the most part have withstood the test of time.


    Representative Poetry Online

    Representative Poetry Online, version 3.0, includes 3,162 English poems by 500 poets from Caedmon, in the Old English period, to the work of living poets today. It is based on Representative Poetry, established by Professor W. J. Alexander of University College, University of Toronto, in 1912 (one of the first books published by the University of Toronto Press), and used in the English Department at the University until the late 1960s.


    BANNED BOOKS ONLINE

    Welcome to this special exhibit of books that have been the objects of censorship or censorship attempts. The books featured here, ranging from Ulysses to Little Red Riding Hood, have been selected from the indexes of The Online Books Page. (See that page for over 20,000 more online books!)


    19th Century Schoolbooks

    19th Century Schoolbooks"The Nietz Old Textbook Collection is one of several well-known collections of 19th Century schoolbooks in the United States. Among the 16,000 volumes are many titles that are rarely held and have not yet been reproduced in microform collections or reprint editions. The collection is used by Pitt faculty and students as well as visiting scholars from other colleges and universities. The ULS received two U.S. Higher Education Act Title IIC grants (1985-1987) to catalog the original collection."


    Library of Congress Rare Books and Special Collections: An Illustrated Guide

    Library of Congress Rare Books and Special Collections: Table of Contents; Introduction (Larry Sullivan Chief, Rare Book and Special Collections Division); American History; American Literature; Europe; Book Arts; The Illustrated Book; List of Selected Special Collections; Concordance of Images (Includes information on how to order copies of the images).


    New York Public Library

    The New York Public Library has been an essential provider of free books, information, ideas, and education for all New Yorkers for more than 100 years. Founded in 1895, NYPL is the nation’s largest public library system, featuring a unique combination of 88 neighborhood branches and four scholarly research centers, bringing together an extraordinary richness of resources and opportunities available to all.


    New Listings—Online Books Page

    “This page lists the titles of on-line books that have recently been added to our index, or whose entries have been recently revised. For a full list of available books, try the main on-line books page.


    Elizabeth Nesbit Room Chapbook Collection at the University of Pittsburgh

    “The Elizabeth Nesbitt Room is located in the Information Sciences Library at the University of Pittsburgh and houses several special collections related to the history of children and their books and media. The volumes in this collection include more than 12,000 books and magazine titles of interest dating from the 1600's through today.”


    An excellent report by Maureen Mulvihill of the auction of rare books and manuscripts from the estate of Paula Peyraud

    The Paula Peyraud Collection: Samuel Johnson & Women Writers in Georgian Society. An Auction Report by Maureen E. Mulvihill as published in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Fall 2009, with 8 images and a list of selected buyers, prices & new locations of the Peyraud properties.
    A pdf of the published report may be downloaded here: http://www.ilab.org/download.php?object=documentation&id=81
    Bloomsbury Auctions: The Paul Peyraud Collection, Wednesday, 6 May 2009 Bookplate from Peyraud copy of Frances Burney’s <i>Cecilia</i>
    ‘DARK LADY’ OF RARE BOOK COLLECTORS, PAULA FENTRESS PEYRAUD (CHAPPAQUA, NY, 1947 ~ 2008). Peyraud Collection Auction, May 2009, Bloomsbury Auctions N.Y. 483 Lots (books, manuscripts, images). Sales total: $1.6 million, including premium. Photograph, Margie Van Dyke. Bookplate from Peyraud copy of Frances Burney’s Cecilia, (lot 218, buyer McGill University). Bookplate bears inscribed initials (“FCP - EKP”), being the collector’s grandparents Frank C. Peyraud & Elizabeth Krysler Peyraud, both visual artists (see “Peyraud,” Benezit, vol. 10, 2006 edition).


    Flutist’s Guide to Research and Repertoire

    Created by Elisabeth La Foret, Masters student in flute performance, Fall 2005.
    Updated by Maranda Reilly, Spring 2010
    Research Resources: Scores, Recordings, Books, Journals Databases, Web sites.


    WALDEINSAMKEIT

    I do not count the hours I spend
    In wandering by the sea;
    The forest is my loyal friend,
    Like God it useth me.
    
    In plains that room for shadows make
    Of skirting hills to lie,
    Bound in by streams which give and take
    Their colors from the sky;
    
    Or on the mountain-crest sublime,
    Or down the oaken glade,
    O what have I to do with time?
    For this the day was made.
    
    Cities of mortals woe-begone
    Fantastic care derides,
    But in the serious landscape lone
    Stern benefit abides.
    
    Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy,
    And merry is only a mask of sad,
    But, sober on a fund of joy,
    The woods at heart are glad.
    
    There the great Planter plants
    Of fruitful worlds the grain,
    And with a million spells enchants
    The souls that walk in pain.
    
    Still on the seeds of all he made
    The rose of beauty burns;
    Through times that wear and forms that fade,
    Immortal youth returns.
    
    The black ducks mounting from the lake,
    The pigeon in the pines,
    The bittern's boom, a desert make
    Which no false art refines.
    
    Down in yon watery nook,
    Where bearded mists divide,
    The gray old gods whom Chaos knew,
    The sires of Nature, hide.
    
    Aloft, in secret veins of air,
    Blows the sweet breath of song,
    O, few to scale those uplands dare,
    Though they to all belong!
    
    See thou bring not to field or stone
    The fancies found in books;
    Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own,
    To brave the landscape's looks.
    
    Oblivion here thy wisdom is,
    Thy thrift, the sleep of cares;
    For a proud idleness like this
    Crowns all thy mean affairs.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882]