The Incunabula Collections at the Library of Congress PETER M. VAN WINGEN Over its 187-year history the Library of Congress has collected nearly 5,700 fifteenth-century books, the largest collection of incunabula in the Western Hemi­ sphere. This paper draws together from many sources the history of the several collections that give the Library this strength. It is a tale of intrigue, good fortune and hard work, of politics, patriotism and philanthropy. The original Library established by Congress in 1800 and destroyed when the British burned the Capitol in 1814 had no fifteenth-century books. Neither did the collection sold to the Congress by Thomas Jefferson in 1815. This is not surprising­ the books in the first Library served the need for general literature, I and Jefferson primarily collected modem, scholarly editions in handy fonnats. By the 1830s there were me mbers of the Senate Library Committee who had a strong interest in developing a library that wa~ universal in scope. Congress's first opportunity to acquire incunabula and early printed books presented itself on February 9, 1836, when Richard Henry Wilde, a fonner member of the House of Representatives who was in Florence working on a biography of Tasso, infonned the Library Committee that the large library of the late Count Dimitrii Buturlin was availahle for $50,000. A catalogue of this collection had been printed in 1831' It contained 25,000 printed volumes, including 979 incunabula, with special strengths in Greek and Latin c1a" ics, including a fin e collection of Aldine editions. The collection was "fullest in those departments in which the Library of Congress is defici ent, particularly ancient authors, belles-lettres, literary history, the fin e arts, and the standard productions of France and Italy.'" In 1836 the Library of Congress held 25,000 books which had been acquired at a cost of $100,000. By this one purchase, Peter M. VanWingcn is Heudofthc Reference and Header Services Section, Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Lihrary o f Congress. This paper was delivered at "Incunabilla in American Lihraries," a symposium sponsored hy the Center for the Book and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, libraI)' of Congress. April 1-2, 1987. 85 86 RARE BOOKS & MANUSCRIPTS LIBRARIANSHIP the collections could be doubled in size for half that amount. The legislative process to purchase the Buturlin collection began smoothly enough. On February 18, 1836, William Campbell Preston, Chairman of the Library Committee, submitted a resolution to the Senate empowering the Library Commit­ tee to inquire further into the purchase of the Buturiin library" D,miel Webster, among others, expressed his high regard for the collection. The resolution was adopted.' Preston's report, on March 15, 1836, pOinted out that the collection "is especially rich in that species of literature which can be scarcely said to exist in this country, for neither the Library of Congress nor any of the public or private libraries of the United States possess anything in bibliography beyond the occasional speci­ men .... There are 119 copies of Aldine editions, 368 from the Bodoni press, many hundred volumes printed in the fifteenth century, and many others illustrative of the early achievements of typography and its progress to perfection.'" On June 4, the resolution died, the victim of partisan backstabbing at the hands of Senator Henry Clay, who had "Ordered, that it lie on the table.'" Clay, a Whig, remembered that in 1829 the newly-elected Democratic President, Andrew Jackson, had removed the Whig Librarian of Congress, George Watterston, and had installed in his stead John Silva Meehan, a Democrat. The Buturiin bill was tabled because "the Whigs could hardly entrust such a library to a Democratic Librarian.'" Although the 1839 Catalogue ofthe Library of Congress . .. 9 lists two incunabula, the Chronecken der Sassen (Mainz: Peter Schoeffer, 6 March 1492) and Ranulphus Higden's Polychronicon (Westminster: Wynkyn de Worde, 13 April 1495), the earliest incunabulum with a recorded date of acquisition is a 1478 edition of Astesanus de As!'s Summa de casibus conscientiae (Venice: Johannes de Colonia and Johannes Manthen, 18 March 1478). This volume, the gift of Obadiah Rich in 1840, is an example of the Library's serendipitous collecting of incunabula in the mid­ nineteenth century. Obadiah Rich had been the American consul at Valencia, Spain, from 1816 until 1829 when he moved to London and established himself as a bookseller. The Library of Congress along with many other American libraries and collectors bought Americana from him. Since the Library was certainly not buying fifteenth-century books, Rich must have made a gift to a good customer of an interesting example of the art of printing. The date that marks the foundation of the incunabula collection at the Library of Congress is April 6, 1867, when the last load of Peter Force's library was received at the Capitoj1O This was a major acquisition for the Library, the beginning of an ongoing interest in early printed books, and a personal triumph for the recently appointed librarian, Ainsworth Rand Spofford. Over a period of thirty years, Force had assembled a formidable collection of primary documents, incorporated into his work published as American Archives 11 Force was acquainted with book dealers throughout this country and abroad and has been called the greatest American book collector of his time. His personal library held INCUNABULA COLLECTIONS AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 87 approximately 22,500 volumes. In 1867 Spofford was able to capture the Force Collection when the New-York Historical Society reneged on its agreement with Force to purchase the collection for $100,000. George H. Moore, Librarian for the SOCiety, wrote to Force on May 30, 1865, to say that the New-York Historical Society had just acquired five acres ofland on Central Park West. The Society had new financial burdens and negotiations with Force ended." On January 25,1867, Ainsworth Spofford submitted a SpeCial Report ... Concerning the Library ofPeter Force" to the Joint Committee on the Library. On the following day, the Committee voted unanimously to recommend the purchase of the Force Library and on March 2, 1867, Congress passed an act authorizing the expenditure of $100,000 for the collection. In his report Spofford pointed out that the Force Library included a group of books illustrating "the progress of the art of printing from its infancy."'·' That section of the collection contained 161 incunabula. Spofford, in a later biography of Force, wrote: "It was not alone with reference to Revolutionary history that Mr. Force's zeal as a historical student was enlisted. He had a passion for the art of printing-his own early chosen profession-and had collected a larger library of books printed in the infancy of the art than any public library in the United States could boast of."" The coll ection had some important books. The earliest imprint was Clemens V's Constitutiones (Mainz: Peter Schoeffer, 8 October 1467); also included were a copy of Hartmann Schede!'s Liber chronicarom (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 12 July 1493) and jenson's 1472 printing of Pliny's Historia naturalis (Venice: Nicolaus Jenson, 1472). Also in 1867, the Smithsonian Institution depOSited its important book coll ection for safekeeping in the Library of Congress, which had been fire-proofed following a disastrous fire in 1851. These books, including approximately sixty incunabula, are listed in the Library's 1868 catalogue. A survey of the accession dates written or stamped in the Library's incunabula reveals that there were scattered purchases of fifteenth-century books between the receipt of the Force Collection and the end of the century. We know, for example, that the Library purchased sometime before 1874 Aristotle's Opera (Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1495-98) as a duplicate from the British Museum. It had been Thomas Grenvill e's copy. HI But gradually, collecting by serendipity changed to coll ecting with a purpose-to form a collection of fifteenth-century books that would show the invention and development of printing in its infancy. The emphasiS was more on assembling museum artifacts than on acquiring texts unrepresented in the Library, and interest in places and dates of printing took precedence over adding new works. This attitude characterized incunabula collecting at the Library of Congress in the late nineteenth century. The Library of Congress moved from the Capitol to its first separate building in 1897. The Annual Report for 1898 reported that an exhibit opened during the year 88 RARE BOOKS & MANUSCRIPTS LIBRARIANSHIP displaying rare and early printed books. The exhibit filled a gallery and included examples of incunabula, representing works printed in every year from 1467 to 1501."17 At the beginning of the twentieth century the count of the fifteenth-century books at the Library stood as follows: Force Collection 161 Smithsonian Deposit 60 Joseph Toner Gift 10 231 Other 130 TOTAL 361 From these numbers it becomes clear that a majority of the incunabula had come to the Library through a few large transactions, a pattern that was to hold true for future acquisitions. The Library's small, interesting collection of incunabula contained enough books to support an ambitious exhibit on the beginning of printing, but it was by no means a research collection. The pivotal event which changed the collection from a nineteenth-century gentleman'S gathering of black-letter books to a twentieth­ century research collection occurred in 1910. In that year the Library received on deposit the collection of John Boyd Thacher of Albany, New York. The collection consisted of four parts: incunabula, early Americana (especially Columbiana), autographs of European notables, and manu­ sCripts, illustrations, and books relating to the French Revolution.