Inspiration to All Who Enter

In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, one of the world's great treasure houses for rare books, comes this sumptuously illustrated curators' choice of fifty of the Library's most prized treasures. Accompanied by insightful and accessible texts, the featured works range from recently acquired items from living authors and poets to some of the most famous, rare, and notorious books in history. Among these works are the original map of the Lewis and Clark expedition, James Joyce's proof sheets to Anna Livia Plurabelle, a song printed on papyrus from the second-century Roman Empire, the Voynich manuscript, a poem-painting by Susan Howe, Langston Hughes' "Montage of a Dream Deferred" in original manuscript form, and many others.