Welcome to Davidson…and to the Rare Book Room.

Welcome students, faculty and staff—new and returning!

I hope to see many of you in the Rare Book Room (fondly known as the RBR) this year—for tours and presentations, displays, class visits, individual research projects, or just because there’s something in the RBR you’d like to see.

What’s there to see?

The Cumming Map Collection:  A collection of the Southeastern United States in early maps.  Collected by Dr. William Patterson Cumming, Davidson professor of English, and donated to the E.H. Little Library’s Rare Book Room.

The Robert Burns Collection:  A collection of the works of Scotland’s National Poet.

The Fugate Collection of First Editions:  100 first editions of both European and American titles primarily from the early 1800s to the mid-20th century.

Golden Cockerel Press Collection:  Fine, limited editions from an early 1920s British private press.

Encyclopédie; ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers: 35 volume French encyclopedia published between 1751 and 1788 in Paris by Denis Diderot, writer and philosopher of the Enlightenment.

First edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost:   The 1668 “Ellis Price” 1st edition, published in London.  Provenance traced by Dr. Richard Cole, Davidson emeritus professor of English.

“The Patrick Gass Journal“:  A first person account of the Lewis & Clark Expedition of 1804-1806, published in 1807.

Incunabula:  Books printed in the early years of printing…between Gutenberg and 1501.

Manuscripts:  Books created by hand…before the printing press.

Cuneiforms:  Primarily temple records, bills of sale, and messenger tablets dating from around 2350 BC.

…and more.  See you soon!