Recent Acquisitions

Occasional posts and news stories about selected recent acquisitions. The Beinecke Library’s annual reports include more of each year’s recent acquistions, briefly noted, and researchers are encouraged to search the library’s collections to explore the full range of materials, both longstanding and newly acquired.

  • Rare collection of recordings by Anthony Braxton enters library’s digital collections

    September 7, 2023

    The Irving S. Gilmore Music Library partnered with the Tri-Centric Foundation to digitally preserve and provide online access to a treasure trove of rare archival material: 751 audio and video recordings by Anthony Braxton, one of the most prominent and ground-breaking composers and musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries. “This is perhaps the most notable collection of Anthony Braxton’s recordings anywhere in the world,” said Jonathan Manton, director of digital special collections and access at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. “Thanks to the efforts of Digital Special Collections and Access staff members Christy Bailey-Tomecek, librarian for AV Access Services, and Tracy MacMath, manager of Digital Accessibility and Design, this collection is now available online for teaching, learning, and research both here at Yale, and across the world.”

  • Hand colored print of Simon of Trent being tortured by Jews. From Hartmann Schedel's Chronicle.

    Simon of Trent in Print

    February 19, 2022

    Famous image of the torture of Simon of Trent by Jews from the Nuremberg Chronicle. Beinecke Library has very strong collection of printed materials relating to the cult of Simon of Trent and the accusation of ritual murder.

  • Yale’s Beinecke Library Acquired 200+ Prints by Legendary Photographer Gordon Parks (Culture Type)

    November 20, 2021

    AN IMPORTANT REPOSITORY of images, books, and materials documenting African American history and culture, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University announced the addition of more than 200 photographs by Gordon Parks to its collection. The prints were acquired directly from The Gordon Parks Foundation and include selections from 11 of the legendary photographer’s most poignant and prized series capturing African American life.

  • Trove of Gordon Parks “Study Sets” Comes to Yale Library

    November 9, 2021

    Yale University Library’s Beinecke Library has acquired a collection of more than 200 prints by renowned American photographer Gordon Parks. The prints, acquired directly from The Gordon Parks Foundation, constitute one of the largest collections of the photographer’s work available for study in an institution.

  • A book with the title shown with the word Lycanthropie on the spine.

    A Dialog on Werewolfism

    October 18, 2021

    The Beinecke Library has purchased a helpful manual on Werewolfism in time for Halloween. Useful for defending against any accusation of Werewolfism and shapeshifting in general, which are theologically impossible because the Bible states that God created humans in a perfect state and would not allow that image to by deformed by satanic manipulation.

  • Barbara Shailor pictured seating in Beinecke Plaza with her donation in front of her.

    Fragment Donated in Honor of Toshiyuki Takamiya

    August 30, 2021

    Barbara Shailor, former director of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, donated a fragment in honor of Toshiyuki Takamiya. The fragment is from the same manuscript as Takamiya MS 91, a twelfth-century manuscript of Rufinus.

  • Beinecke Library 2019-2020 Annual Report

    October 9, 2020

    The Beinecke Library 2019-2020 Annual Report, including stories, statistics, and selected recent acquisitions, can be read and downloaded here: Beinecke...

  • The Older Frederick Douglass Revealed In Yale's Newly Acquired Collection Of Family Scrapbooks (WNPR)

    July 13, 2020

    Yale historian David Blight says when he first saw a collection of family scrapbooks of the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, he was astonished. Blight had been fascinated by Frederick Douglass all of his life. He’d written a book and edited autobiographies about the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day. But the scrapbooks offered new insights into Douglass’ life and eventually inspired Blight’s 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. The materials belonged to a collector, Dr. Walter Evans, and have recently been acquired by Yale’s Beinecke Library. Connecticut Public Radio’s Morning Edition host, Diane Orson, spoke with David Blight.

  • Never Too Late: Rachel Churner on the Late Style of Eileen Myles and Yvonne Rainer (Artforum, note: paywall)

    February 1, 2020

    LAST FALL, at the New School in New York, poet Eileen Myles presented an essay they’d written on the acquisition of their archives by Yale University’s Beinecke Library. Having sold 108 linear feet of personal notebooks, drafts, computer files, and trinkets—what the archivists dryly called “mixed materials”—and aware that all would soon be available to the grubby hands of the public, Myles noted, “It was a little like being buried alive.”

  • Photograph of Ilicio Joni, posing with his arms folded in front of a painting on an easel

    Delighting in Forged Bindings: Icilio Federico Joni

    January 27, 2020

    Recently purchased bindings were twentieth century fakes purported to be medieval Sienese originals. The Beinecke collects fakes and forgeries to document how these materials were created, promoted, and ultimately discovered.

  • Rachel Blau DuPlessis Papers

    January 23, 2020

    The Beinecke Library is pleased to announce a newly acquired collection: the papers of Rachel Blau DuPlessis. DuPlessis is a contemporary American poet,...

  • David Milch Papers

    October 7, 2019

    The papers of screenwriter and producer David Milch include writings, scripts, correspondence, videocassettes, printed material, and ephemera.

  • Beinecke Library 2018-2019 Annual Report

    September 17, 2019

    The Beinecke Library 2018-2019 Annual Report, including stories, statistics, and selected recent acquisitions, can be read and downloaded here: Beinecke...

  • Poet Wayne Koestenbaum’s archive ‘a memory lane of mental calories spent’

    September 11, 2019

    Over the course of a varied and prolific career, Wayne Koestenbaum has published poetry collections, volumes of cultural criticism, novels, and a libretto. Two years ago, he plunged into an entirely different sort of project, one that involved managing Excel spreadsheets and contemplating his unpublished work.

  • Beinecke Library Acquires David Sedaris Papers

    December 10, 2018

    The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has acquired the papers of David Sedaris, noted American humorist, author, and essayist. Sedaris, who grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and graduated from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago in 1987, is the author of works including Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, and Calypso.

  • Beinecke Library 2017-2018 Annual Report

    November 20, 2018

    The Beinecke Library 2017-2018 Annual Report, including stories, statistics, and selected recent acquisitions, can be read and downloaded here: Beinecke...

  • New Acquisition: Orson Welles Scripts

    October 26, 2018

    The Beinecke has recently acquired new Orson Welles materials, including an unproduced screenplay, the original script of a 1943 film, and a second draft of Welles’ famous film Citizen Kane with accompanying notes.

  • New Acquisition: A Long Way from Home Archive

    October 15, 2018

    Beinecke Library has acquired the archive for the documentary A Long Way from Home: The Untold Story of Baseball's Desegregation, written by Gaspar Gonzalez and Matthew Frye Jacobson and directed by Gaspar Gonzalez.

  • NEW Acquisition: H.D.'s Needlework

    April 13, 2018

    The Yale Collection of American Literature is pleased to announce an addition to the H. D, Papers: the Schaffner Family Foundation has donated a collection of needleworks created by H. D.

  • Beinecke Apocalypse

    March 13, 2017

    The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has acquired an early illustrated copy of Telesphorus of Cosenza’s LIbellus de magnis tribulationibus et de...

  • Icons of American Literature

    September 15, 2016

    A collection of postcards, issued by Marc Selvaggio, Books & Ephemera, with reproductions of paintings by Peter Oresick.

  • Recently Acquired Papal Letter

    December 17, 2015

    This is a recently acquired papal letter written by Pope Gregory IX in 1234. Papal letters are called bulls after the lead seal affixed to the document called...

  • New Collection: Cultivating Thought Series

    June 22, 2015

    Chipotle Mexican Grill has made a gift of a complete set of its Cultivating Thought Series—short texts by acclaimed authors printed on paper cups and bags—to the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Library.

  • Cabin in the Sky

    January 14, 2015

    The collection includes behind-the-scenes photographs and posed photographs depicting actors Eddie Anderson, Lena Horne, and Rex Ingram, as well as other cast members.

  • Hallelujah

    January 14, 2015

    Hallelujah was one of the first films with an all-African American cast made by a major movie studio.

  • Red Summer Archive

    September 23, 2014

    The collection includes correspondence, printed material, and reports documenting the response among African American activists to the race riots of the summer of 1919, including efforts to aid victims and defend arrestees in Chicago, Knoxville, and Elaine, Arkansas. Material relating to the Chicago branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is particularly well represented.

  • Cave Canem Foundation Records

    September 9, 2014

    Among the most important and influential African American Arts organizations, the Cave Canem Foundation was established in 1996 by poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady to “remedy the under-representation and isolation of African American poets in Master of Fine Arts programs and writing workshops across the United States.”

  • Cornelius Eady Papers

    September 9, 2014

    The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library is excited to announce that it has acquired the literary archive of award-winning poet, dramatist, and literary activist Cornelius Eady.

  • New Collection: Miller Scrapbook

    May 20, 2014

    The Beinecke Library has acquired an autograph manuscript diary and scrapbook that documents a trip to Nova Scotia trip by Richard A. Miller and Janet Miller, with their children David and Meredith, from Glastonbury, Connecticut, to Nova Scotia, 1978 July 30-August 13.

  • New Collection: 1920s Cartoons

    May 14, 2014

    The Yale Collection of American Literature has acquired a collection of humorous cartoons by an unidentified American artist, signed "F.G." or "J.G.," that feature a protagonist, Jerry, probably the alter ego of the artist, and his pursuit of women, as well as drinking alcohol, automobiles, and other subjects, circa 1926.

  • New Collection: Bell Scrapbook

    May 5, 2014

    The volume includes narrative about the trip, as well as circa 130 mounted photographic prints, circa 145 newspaper clippings and printed items, and 15 booklets and pamphlets tipped in or laid in.

  • New Acquisition: Black Film Ephemera

    March 7, 2014

    These posters, press books, and lobby cards date from the 1940s through the 1980s, with an especially large concentration in the 1970s, the heyday of so-called "Blaxploitation" cinema.

  • Soul Passages

    February 11, 2014

    The James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters has acquired more than 100 books included on the reading list of the Soul Passages Book Club, a Hartford, Connecticut, based reading group dedicated for more than 20 years to African American literary culture.

  • Marilynne Robinson Papers

    February 24, 2013

    The Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has acquired the papers of Pulitzer-prize winning author and essayist Marilynne Robinson.

  • Recent Acquisition: English Pocket Bible (13th century)

    February 10, 2013

    An English pocket Bible in Latin arrived this past fall in the Beinecke's collections. The Bible shows many signs of use, including numerous marginal notes and it contains a separate book to aid the reader, the Interpretation of Hebrew Names, a detail of which is shown here.

  • "Beauty and Success"

    August 2, 2012

    Madam C. J. Walker (1867-1919) was a leading African-American businesswoman in the 1910s, and a pioneer in the beauty industry. Her products not only promised “good hair” and a “smooth, clear complexion” but also success for black women, a narrative that reflected Walker’s own ambition and remarkable rise as the first free-born American citizen in a family of slaves.