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

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 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.