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Education — Lenhardt Library
Stories from the Rare Book Collection
Rare books are living entities, windows into long-forgotten ideas, pursuits, and relationships. Join us as we explore intellectual paths that have long been hidden.
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Georgius Everhardus Rumphius Shangaied before this term was invented, Rumphius was in turn a youthful mercenary, teacher, construction supervisor, sailor, warrior, merchant, author, and scientist. He lost his wife and daughter to an earthquake, lost his vision to his personal expeditions for fauna and flora, and never returned to his native Germany.
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Constantine Samuel Rafinesque What's a species? To Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1783-1840), almost anything became a separate species, even different forms of lightning. The ultimate splitter, Rafinesque named thousands of species, of which only a few have survived taxonomic scrutiny to this day.
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John Quincy Adams and the flora of the District of Columbia Tantalizingly, in ink, on the upper right corner of the Chicago Botanic Garden's copy of Florula columbiensis you will find the name of a previous owner of this document, signed "J Q Adams." Could this pamphlet once have been in the hands of John Quincy Adams (1767–1849), sixth president of the United States (1825–1829)?
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Henriette Vincent, star pupil of Redoute There is a special rarity in the rare book collection of the Lenhardt Library, a work so unusual that you might have to travel to the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris to see another copy, because of its unique illustrations.
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Theophrastus and the beginnings of modern botany in the Renaissance The oldest book in the Lenhardt Library's Rare Book Collection has a special name, and we even know its birthday. Entited Historia plantarum, it is the first great botanical work published by the ancient Greek polymath and Aristotelian student and successor, Theophrastus (371–287 B.C.).
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Letters from an American farmer: From optimist to escapist, Crèvecoeur created in Letters from an American farmer a panoramic description of young America. It is first great American fictional work, one that, for decades, many believed to be an earnest and honest view of a new country and its citizens.
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Ellen Robbins, New England's extraordinary watercolorist Such is the talent of Ellen Robbins (1828–1905): One contemporary noted that her work was "so natural that bees might light" on her watercolors of spring wildflowers.
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Victor Jacquemont, the botanical romantic Victor Jacquemont (1801–32), was the most charismatic, tragic, and energetic natural historian of his generation. His career as a scientist was cut off sadly on his return home from an ambitious expedition in India—including Kashmir and the Himalayas—dying in Bombay less than four months after his 31st birthday.
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Chicago in 1880: A horticultural perspective Historical descriptions of urban areas are often filled with misinformation, hearsay, myths, and occasional factoids. It was with some surprise that one of my students uncovered an overview of Chicago as it appeared more than 130 years ago in an obscure horticultural magazine...
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Philip Henry Gosse's orchidophilia Philip Henry Gosse (1810–88) was passionate, perhaps even a little mad, for orchids, admitting to delight in his friends being smitten by his disease or as he called it, "orchid mania."
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William Turner and his Tudor illustrators William Turner (d. 1568) is justly famous as the first modern botanist and ornithologist in the United Kingdom. He compiled accurate lists of birds and plants in 1538. He wrote the first great English herbal, published in three parts between 1551 and 1568. Turner was also a nonconformist's nonconformist, always running afoul of the Court, his colleagues, and even his neighbors because of his religious and political views.
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Defining the Renaissance: Hagecius, Liberale, Mattioli, and Paracelsus Pietro Andrea Mattioli's (1500–77) Herbarz (1562) was one of the most significant editions of Mattioli's commentary on Dioscorides (circa A.D. 40–90). It was a reference herbal for Renaissance physicians. It is also one of scarcest herbals, with less than a handful of copies extant in North America.
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Mungo Park and the kindness of strangers Scottish physician and explorer Mungo Park (1771–1806) is best remembered for his plain-spoken descriptions of Africa at the end of the eighteenth century. |
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Training library patrons to return what they've borrowed Hidden in the 181-year-old-pages of the weekly New England Farmer is a brief list of books in the library of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. |
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Sebastien Vaillant, precursor to Linnaeus Sebastien Vaillant (1669–1722) was one of the most important scientists of his time in the early eighteenth century. He systematically described the flora of Paris and its environs, communicated with colleagues and students across Europe, and organized the King's garden in Paris. |
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The importance of reproductions: Dioscorides's Codex Vindobonenis The most ponderous work in the rare book collection? Without a doubt, it is Dioscorides's Codex Vindobenis, released in 1905 by Leiden publisher Albertus Willem Sijthoff. This magnificent publication represents the first full-sized photographic reproduction of the most famous Byzantine manuscript of all time. |
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Letters from an eighteenth-century traveler and a botanical inventory Imagine visiting the middle of the North American continent 250 years ago. What would a visit to New Orleans be like? Who lived in Illinois? |
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Redwoods, photography, and the birth of conservation On March 15, 1897, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society acquired for a mere $1.50 a little promotional book from a now-extinct bookstore at 56 Cornhill in Boston. Little did they know how invaluable their acquisition would become more than a century later. |
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Hortus Eystettensis, Basilius Besler, gardens, and cabinets Once upon a time, long before football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, science was a sport, an intellectual adventure between collectors and their cabinets (imagine a miniature natural history museum in your rec room). Individuals would pursue exotic plants, animals, fossils, minerals, and archaeolotical artifacts to illustrate in a very tangible way their wealth and intelligence.
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Dr. Boerhaave "discovered" in Glencoe Rare books surprise you, appearing in the most unexpected places. Take the latest acquisition of the Lenhardt Library. It is entitled A Treatise on the Powers of Medicines, by the Late Learned Herman Boerhaave. Translated from the Most Correct Latin by John Martyn. This book was published in London in 1740.
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