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Stephen A. Schwarzman Building > Collections & Reading Rooms > George Arents Collection A Brief Survey25 parts, with 367 colored plates, is a good example of these magnificent works. Monograph of the Phasianidae or Family of the Pheasants, by Daniel G. Elliott, is another. This is in six parts and has 78 large and beautiful colored plates. English Botany, by James Sowerby, in 850 parts, octavo, 1790-1863, is also present. The importance of this work in the history of botany does not need emphasis. Complete thus in parts, with the supplement, and with all the colored plates, it is of great rarity. One must stop here, albeit unwillingly. Besides the books in parts there are a certain number of other items in the Arents collection which relate to, or are associated with, these works; in some cases these are in volume-form. None of these is mentioned here but it is planned to list them later. There is also another very important class of material, e.g., autograph manuscripts by authors whose works are represented, such as the original autograph manuscript of Trollope's The Prime Minister; and autograph letters by Dickens, Thackeray, Bulwer-Lytton, Ainsworth, H. G. Wells, and others. It is, I think, also worth noting that there is a rather extensive correspondence of the egregious Harriette Wilson; these letters, apparently unpublished, are of considerable interest to the student of manners. There are also original drawings for certain of the books in the collection. A complete set of the illustrations by Marcus Stone for Trollope's He Knew He Was Right is in the collection. There are also drawings by John Leech, Henry Alken, George Cruikshank, Thomas Rowlandson, and Hablôt K. Browne. The acquisition of books in parts differs from the collecting of some other
types of books, such as the first editions of the works of individual authors.
It is possible to obtain, for instance, all of the works of such authors
as Dickens, Kipling, or Meredith, if a collector has money and patience.
The course has been charted and the goal is in sight. This is not so with
books in parts which exist in almost all the fields in which works have been
published. It would be a tremendous, perhaps an impossible, task to list
them all. The collector of such books is like a hunter who does not know
the kind of game he will encounter. In such hunting of books there is the
element of surprise. He may, for instance, come across the works of Plato
in parts. Aesop's Fables exists in fascicules. Why not Mother
Goose Rhymes? It would seem appropriate for at least one
edition of Euclid's Elements to have appeared in numbers. The
sporting bibliophile who is looking for books in parts, has, too, the advantage
that his game is preserved in his library; his trophies do not
require stuffing and mounting. These precious and frail works can be taken
from his shelves and looked at or held by other collectors. The field is
wide for adding to the Arents collection, and it is happy hunting in the
greatest of all sports. |