Romantic Interests: Celebrating 30 Years of the Pforzheimer Collection at NYPL

Splendour among Shadows
2016 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle coming to The New York Public Library.
 
News of the Collection's arrival at the Library made the front page of the New York Times on December 18, 1986; shortly thereafter a formal presentation ceremony was held at City Hall. Before that, the Collection had spent nearly 30 years as part of the Pforzheimer Library, housed next door to Grand Central Terminal at 41 East 42nd Street, a building demolished earlier this year. Acquired over decades by the financier and philanthropist Carl H. Pforzheimer (1879-1957), the Pforzheimer Library was one of the great American book and manuscripts collections of the twentieth century. It had a Gutenberg Bible and a world-class collection of early English literature; an Americana collection; a children's book collection; and much, much more. Perhaps the most extraordinary of the Library's collections, and certainly one of the richest, was the subcollection known as Shelley and His Circle.
 
Pforzheimer Collection
The Pforzheimer Collection reading room
Pforzheimer acquired his first large tranche of Percy Bysshe Shelley-related books and manuscripts in 1920, at the sale of the library of Harry Buxton Forman, the Shelley collector and editor. By the time of his death in 1957, he had acquired nearly all of Shelley's first editions, and over 200 Shelley manuscripts, mostly letters. Pforzheimer also bought books and manuscripts by the poet's wife, Mary Shelley; her parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft; the Shelleys' literary friends , including Byron, Thomas Love Peacock, Leigh Hunt, and many others. In the course of this pursuit, Pforzheimer built the largest and most important collection of British Romanticism outside of England.
 
In its three decades at NYPL the Pforzheimer Collection has grown considerably. It is very much a living collection; new materials are accessioned continually, and researchers come from all over the world to work in its small but accomodating reading room.
 
To celebrate the occasion, a small exhibition titled “Splendour Among Shadows” was mounted in the Schwarzman Building’s McGraw Rotunda. Featuring over a dozen treasures from the Collection, the exhibit included the manuscript of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s first known extant poem, a lock of Mary Shelley’s hair, and a preliminary design for Lord Byron’s yacht.

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Celebrating 30 Years of the Pforzheimer Collection at NYPL

As one of the UK researchers who owes much more than I can say to this wonderful collection and its curators, and who has been visiting it since 1989, I should just like to say Thank you again and again. O that a chariot of cloud were mine so that I could just fly across to New York and pop in to this exhibition! Thank you, Charles Carter, for the notice

My favorite library collection

As a former member of the Keats-Shelley Association (I should renew...http://k-saa.org/ ), I recall with fondness the Mary Shelley Bicentennial Conference of 1997 (& still have the poster in my parlor). I also came down from Ithaca to see the Shelley's Ghost exhibit; I have the catalog in my collectio (2012): https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/shelley%E2%80%99s-ghost-afterlife-poet As a librarian who has visited collections at the Morgan, Princeton, Cornell, LOC, and the Rosebach, it says a lot to call this my favorite collection. Thanks for taking good care of it! Congratulations on your 30 year anniversary. One question: is the Splendor Among Shadows exhibit over? You write about it in the past tense.

Pforzheimer Collection

I would love to visit this reading room, but it always seems to be locked. Can I make an appointment sometime at your convenience? I loved the Shelley show a while ago. Nancy Wight, Friend and Bigelow Society Member