Gordon Collection

The Gordon Collection at the University of Virginia comprises some 1200 volumes of French books dating from the sixteenth through the 19th century. Over 600 were printed before 1600, and many retain their original bindings. The collection, which came to the University of Virginia in 1986, was the bequest of the late Douglas Huntly Gordon of Baltimore, a prominent Maryland attorney, former president of St. John’s College in Annapolis, and recipient of the French Légion d'Honneur and Palmes Académiques. A Francophile since his undergraduate days at Harvard, Mr. Gordon was a notable American bibliophile.

Contents

The approximately 600 Gordon books dating from the 16th century include literary works and titles pertaining to religion, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, travel and architecture. Together, they provide a remarkable window on the French Renaissance. The rarity of so many of the books, combined with the size and range of the collection, make it a treasure for Renaissance scholars from around the world, as well as those studying the early history of printing and the book arts. In fact, many of the volumes are counted among only a few surviving copies, and, in some cases, the Gordon book is the only known copy in the world. Among the rarest sixteenth-century titles in the collection, for example, are an illustrated edition of Marot’s Blasons anatomiques du corps feminin …, published by Charles Langelier in Paris in 1543, and a little-known volume of Alciati’s emblems, Les emblemes de M. Andre Alciat, traduits en ryme Francoise par Iean le Feure, published in Lyon by Jean de Tournes in 1549, with woodcuts attributed to Bernard Salomon.

Gordon Collection works include a hand-edited volume of Diderot's Encyclopedia, as well as 16th century works by Rabelais, Ronsard, Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne, Louise Labe, Marot and several Books of Hours.

Recent developments

The University of Virginia Library and the University of Virginia French Department are in the process of expanding the Renaissance in Print (Gordon Project), made possible by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and continued support from the Florence Gould Foundation. Digital facsimiles of 16th-century French books in the Douglas Gordon Collection continue to be made available on this site thanks to the support of the Florence Gould Foundation. New titles are listed on the Index page. A Preservation and Access grant award from the NEH will fund the development of a significantly expanded set of reference materials over the next two years.^{[citation needed]}

Links

• http://www.lib.virginia.edu/rmds/collections/gordon/index.html