Rare Books: Collection Strengths

Major Collections

• Aesthetics and Literary Theory
  More than 350 volumes on aesthetics and criticism, most published in the 18th century in Great Britain.  The collection includes well-known titles by canonical figures, such as William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds, as well as works by as-yet-undiscovered authors. Additional titles are regularly acquired.
• British Naval History Collection
  Nearly 400 titles. The collection is described separately on this site.
• California
  More than 800 books from the 18th-19th centuries. The collection is described separately on this site.
• Costume and Fashion
  Complementing the Dance collection are more than 250 books and serials on costume and fashion.  Search Library Search by subject Clothing and dress, Fashion, Women's clothing, and related topics. Search by genre for Fashion plates, Fashion design drawings, Costume prints, and Costume design drawings.
• Courville Collection
  Two hundred books collected and donated by Cyril Brian Courville, M.D., on the history of neurological science and, more generally, medicine. Described in the Catalog of Works in the Neurological sciences, Collected by Cyril Brian Courville, M.D. (Irvine: Regents of the University of California, 1978).  The bibliography also lists Courville’s non-rare books in the same field, which are stored at the Southern Regional Library Facility (SRLF) on the UCLA campus.
• Dance
  More than 200 books from the 17th-19th centuries. The collection is described separately on this site.
• Hollingsworth Collection
  Books on sexually transmitted diseases, with a focus on syphilis. The bequest of Merrill W. Hollingsworth, M.D.
• Emma D. Menninger Collection
  More than 2,000 monographs and serials on horticulture, with an emphasis on orchids, from the 18th century onward. Most notable is a complete run of Curtis's Botanical Magazine (1794 to present).  The bequest of Emma D. Menninger, an eminent orchid scholar and hybridist.
• Mesoamerican Codices
  More than forty facsimile reproductions.

Rare Books: Major Topics

The collection documents many topics, including these:

• Aesthetics
• African Americans
• Art
• Ballads
• Conduct of life
• Costume
• Criticism
• English language -- Dictionaries
• English literature
• English poetry
• Ethics
• Fashion
• France
• French language
• French literature
• Great Britain
• Medicine
• Painting
• Poetry
• Sexually transmitted diseases
• Slavery
• Surgery
• Syphilis
• Voyages and travels
• Women
• Women -- Rights
• Women -- Suffrage