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The collection, a part of the William A. Speck Collection of Goetheana, consists of manuscript scores, all either settings of texts by Goethe or compositions based on, or inspired by, his works. The music manuscripts include autographs by Liszt, Carl Loewe, Mendelssohn, Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Ludwig Spohr, and Karl Friedrich Zelter. The collection includes a one-page fragment from Beethoven's Egmont Overture, Op. 84, and an early sketch from Wagner's Faust Overture.

The William A. Speck Collection of Goetheana: Original Artwork is an artificial collection comprising original artwork that came to Yale from various sources, mostly during the Speck Collection's early decades. It includes some of the Collection's best-known holdings, including an anonymous silhouette made of Goethe in 1786 as well as original sketches and engravings by Goethe. Other artists represented include Wilhelm von Kaulbach, Georg Melchior Kraus, Johann Heinrich Lips, and Moritz Retzsch.

The William A. Speck Collection of Goetheana: Theater Ephemera consists of eighteenth- through twentieth-century theater playbills, programs, broadsides, posters, and other ephemera documenting performances of plays, operas, magic and puppet shows, burlesques and lectures based on works by Goethe (primarily Faust) and other German and European writers and composers.

Print collection of portraits, views, and illustrations focused on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The portraits are of persons associated with Goethe, and include an extensive file on Goethe. The views are of places where Goethe lived or visited, particularly Weimar, and the illustrations are of scenes and characters from Goethe's works.

Collection consists of correspondence, notes and drafts, card files, personal and family papers, documenting the founding of the Speck Collection and William A. Speck's activity as a Goethe collector and interpreter.

The William Beckford Collection consists of correspondence, a few manuscripts, personal papers of Beckford family members, a 16mm motion picture film on Beckford with accompanying reel-to-reel soundtrack, and other papers relating to Beckford research and collections.

Correspondence, writings, personal papers and musical compositions by Ezra Pound dating from his sojourn in Paris during the early 1920s.

The collection consists of documents, correspondence, and drawings by the English artist William Blake and his colleague John Linnell. Included are business and financial documents covering the relationship between Blake and Linnell, a letter from Blake to Linnell, two drawings by Blake, and a portrait of Blake by Linnell. The items were acquired by the library between 1941 and 1973.

The papers contain correspondence, newsletters, diplomatic papers, and reports documenting Blathwayt's career and English foreign policy and history in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

Correspondence and other papers relating to William Bowyer's (1699-1777) work as a printer in London. The bulk of the correspondence consists of incoming letters to Bowyer from the scholars Edward Clarke, William Clarke, and Jeremiah Markland, concerning printing, scholarly subjects, languanges including Greek and Hebrew, and family matters. Other correspondents include James Stanier Clarke, Catherine Markland, William Strode, Moses Williams, and William Wotten. Also includes two items written by Bowyer and a few letters addressed to Bowyer's apprentice and partner John Nichols. Letters prior to 1737 may have been addressed to the elder William Bowyer. Two letters in latin, signed "Ambrosius Bonvicus," were probably written by Ambrose Bonwicke as a student at St. John's College, Oxford.
Other Papers include a manuscript address for a Mr. Stawell to give to the Duchess of York, an engraving of William Bowyer, an 1874 collection inventory by James Crossley, and proof sheets of an unidentified history of Bowyer's printing business.