So Precious a Foundation : The Library of Leander Van Ess at the Burke Library of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York : [Catalogue]

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Limited edition of 1600 copies, this being one of the 100 numbered copies signed by the editor. Cloth, large 8vo, 356, [3] pp, plates (some colour). Text in German and English. From the foreword: "The library of Leander van Ess arrived in New York in 1838 and has since then reposed within the library of Union Theological Seminary, its incunabula known to students of the earliest printing but the rest of its contents essentially unknown. Few items from the collection have left the Seminary's buildings in the interim, and never has there been an effort to study and exhibit this "precious foundation" of the largest and most comprehensive theological library in the New World. In 1838, the purchase of this library in Germany by a new and impoverished Institution was audacious. As one looks back upon it, it was clearly also an event of importance in nineteenth-century cultural and educational history, it created one of the first research libraries in America - a phenomenon of greater importance than the fact that the library included (at the time) the largest collection of incunabula west of the Atlantic Ocean. The founding of Union's library also significantly fostered the German-American educational exchange that was the most important factor in the development of American universities in the second half of the century. These facts would have warranted an exhibition of books from the Library of Leander van Ess, but the research involved in the preparation of the exhibition has also revealed that the collection contains invaluable evidence for the history of books and libraries in Germany, and it demonstrates that the collector, Leander van Ess, was himself a figure of importance not only for biblical translation (for which he has chiefly been known) but also in the history of collecting and scholarship." Copy No. 65, signed by the editor. Fine in publisher's printed slipcase. N° de ref. del artículo ABE-52224

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