Collections : [Yale University -Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library]

The papers of the Panat family include correspondence, legal documents, and financial records dating from the 13th to the 19th century. The documents of trials, testaments, and genealogies concern the Panat family and families to which they were joined by marriage, including the families of de Brunet (later de Brunet de Castelpers), Toulouse-Lautrec, La Rochefoucauld, Saint Chamans, and Pujols.

A collection of approximately 400 manuscript items, including letters; letterbooks; copies of statutes, pleadings, opinions and precedents; King's Bench reports; abridgments and commonplace books of cases; and other papers, documenting the development and practice of English law and the evolution of the English legal system from the thirteenth into the twentieth century. Included are an early copy of Henry de Bracton's De legibus Anglie; a fourteenth-century pocket compilation of "Statuta vetera" that opens with a copy of the Magna Carta; case reports from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries; letters, opinions and notes by a range of English legal figures, including William Blackstone, Edward Coke, Edward Law, Lord Thurlow, and Francis Wedderburn; and guides to court proceedings and practice from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The Osborn Manuscript Files contain single, unbound manuscripts and small groups of manuscripts acquired for the Osborn Collection which the Library has chosen to describe in finding-aid style lists rather than as discrete entries in Yale University Library's on-line public access catalog (ORBIS). The materials in the Osborn Manuscript Files include literary and historical manuscripts, individual and small groups of letters, and single documents, as well as some "Unprocessed" material such as engraved portraits and bibliographic information.

Spinelli Archives. Over 100,000 documents dating from the fourteenth century to the eighteenth, from the palace archive of a Florentine family distinguished for their international banking and mercantile interests in the fifteenth century, their political activities in the city for several centuries, their patronage of religious institutions in Florence and Rome, and their association with the local silk guild. Included are the records of family members who served as papal bankers in the fifteenth century, ambassadors to the courts of Henry VIII and Charles V, churchmen, senators, and ducal employees. The collection documents social and family history, recording the day-to-day concerns of merchants, farmers, workmen, slaves, women, and children in thousands of wills, marriage contracts, personal diaries, family correspondence, grocery lists, household inventories, farm reports, tax statements, and business ledgers. In addition to the papers of the Spinelli family members, the Spinelli Archive also includes extensive documentation on the Baldocci, Guardi, Buonguglielmi and many other Florentine families.

The Walter L. Pforzheimer Collection of Historical Manuscripts contains approximately 500 manuscript documents, circa 1370s-1870s, consisting of letters, legal documents, and other manuscripts written or signed by European heads of state, government, diplomatic, military or church officials, or literary authors. Most materials are French, including documents signed by French royalty and nobility, 14th-18th centuries. Many French manuscripts date from the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, including printed Revolutionary government documents completed in manuscript. A small amount of similar documents from other European countries and the United States are present. Some documents contain evidence of previous ownership, such as annotations, collectors' bindings, or bookplates. Also present are materials relating to Pforzheimer's research and collecting, 1920s-circa 1960s, consisting of card files, biographical notes, engraved portraits, and vendor descriptions.

The following finding aid is a complete inventory of the contents of Osborn fb159. This list was reformatted from previously existing cataloging.

The Saul Steinberg Papers consist of correspondence, artwork, professional papers, personal papers, photographs, published artwork, clippings, collected and source material, realia, financial papers, and audio-visual material documenting artist Saul Steinberg's professional and personal activities. The papers document Steinberg's development as an artist, his career as a fine artist and as an illustrator for the The New Yorker magazine, his travels, his personal life, and his personal and professional relationships, including his relationships with his wife artist Hedda Sterne and with his partner Sigrid Spaeth. Spaeth's papers, consisting of correspondence, photographs, personal papers, professional papers, and some audio-visual materials, are also included. The bulk of the papers date from 1931-1999, primarily from Steinberg's life after immigrating to the United States in 1942. Also included are ephemera, manuscripts, and other printed material from the 15th-19th centuries collected by Steinberg during his lifetime.

The Boswell Collection documents the lives, activities, and interests of more than ten generations of Boswell family members. The papers span the dates 1428-1936, but the bulk of the material dates from the eighteenth century. The collection is divided into two parts. Part I, the JamesBoswell Papers, contains the papers of Johnson's biographer James Boswell organized and catalogued by Marion S. Pottle. Part II, Boswell FamilyPapers, consists of all the previously unprocessed material relating to the Boswell family.

The Henrietta C. Bartlett Papers contain correspondence, research files and other materials related to Bartlett's research, publications and lectures on bibliography and collecting, generally concerned with Shakespeare and other writers of his time. The Papers are organized into four series. Series I, Correspondence, consists primarily of letters to Bartlett, and some third-party letters. Where copies or originals of letters from Bartlett are included, a note has been made in the box and folder list. Series II, Writings, contains typescripts and sample pages of writings by Bartlett, typescript lectures, notes, pages from early printed books, glass slides, and other materials related to her lectures. Series III, Research Files, contains newspaper clippings, notes and articles on authors, book collectors, and libraries, specimen pages from various printers, and miscellaneous printed items. Series IV, Hroswitha Club, consists of club minutes, membership lists, printed items and other material related to the Hroswitha Club, a group of women interested in book and manuscript collecting. Restricted Fragile Papers contains material from Series II and III. Oversize contains material from Series II.

The Walter Wilson Greg Papers document the scholarly career of bibliographer and textual editor Walter Wilson Greg, particularly his work on the multi-volume A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration (4 volumes, 1939-1959). Materials relating to this work include working papers, photostats, prints, and the plate illustrations for Volume I as well as correspondence with other scholars and editors on bibliographical subjects and on the works of Shakespeare. The collection also contains copies of book reviews and scholarly articles by Greg, as well as offprints of articles by his colleagues, often inscribed to Greg, and manuscripts of several articles and lectures, including "The Elements of Textual Criticism in Shakespeare's Plays" and "What Is Bibliography?"