William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library (Clark Library), the oldest building and one of the twelve libraries at the University of California, Los Angeles, is one of the most comprehensive rare books and manuscripts libraries in the United States, with particular strengths in English literature and history (1641-1800), Oscar Wilde, and fine printing. It is located about thirteen miles from UCLA, in the West Adams District of Los Angeles north of the University of Southern California. It is administered by UCLA's Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies, which offers several prestigious fellowships for graduate and postdoctoral scholars to use the Library's collections. However, any reader with a serious interest in the collection is welcome to study.

The heart of the Clark's academic activity is its core programs, a series of interdisciplinary events developed around a common theme. Core programs may range from three or four consecutive workshops to a series spanning a year or more, with a full complement of symposia, workshops, graduate seminars, and public lectures. The core programs are organized each year by the current Clark Professor or Professors, who are encouraged to design programs that will lead to publication in the Center/Clark series. ^*

History

The library and its collections were built by William Andrews Clark, Jr., and named after his father, a U.S. Senator, who had amassed a mining fortune in Montana. The son, a prominent Los Angeles book collector and philanthropist, had a house at the corner of Adams and Cimarron, and from 1924 to 1926 he constructed the present library on the same lot. After its completion Clark announced his intent to donate the collection, the buildings, and the square-block property to UCLA. The deed passed to the University upon his death in 1934. It was UCLA's first major bequest, and still one of the most generous in the University's history.

Collections Background

The early twentieth century ushered in a heyday of American book collecting. William Andrews Clark, Jr., along with other moneyed bibliophiles such as J. Paul Getty, Henry E. Huntington and Henry Clay Folger, first began forming his library during this period.

Initially, Clark collected a broad array of English imprints. His library included the four Shakespeare folios; important editions of Chaucer, Ben Jonson, Byron, Dickens, and Robert Louis Stevenson; works illustrated by George Cruikshank and William Blake; French literature from Pierre de Ronsard to Émile Zola; autograph letters and manuscripts by authors, statesmen, and musicians; and materials relating to the exploration of the American West. In time, Clark began to concentrate his collecting on English literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly in Restoration, which defines the strengths of the Clark Library today. Eventually, Clark also developed a large collection of Oscar Wilde books and manuscripts.

Clark also took an interest in fine printing, which is represented by complete runs of the books printed by the Kelmscott Press and Doves Press, the two greatest influences on the revival of printing in England at the turn of the century. The library also has a substantial collection of American fine presses in the Arts and Crafts Movement, particularly Californian printers. The library continues to collect in this field.

As of 2006, the collection contains over 100,000 books and 22,000 manuscripts, including an extensive reference collection of modern books, periodicals and microfilm.

Collections of the 17th and 18th Centuries

The Clark Library is one of the most extensive for British literature and history from the English Civil War through the reign of George II (1641-1761). Many of its collections are only rivaled by the British Library, especially its literary collections, which include literary giants John Dryden, John Milton, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, and Aphra Behn. The Clark Library also has substantial collections of music books and songs, scores, and musicology printed before 1750; ballad and comic operas; the edited works of Purcell, Handel, and their contemporaries in England; and a choice collection of manuscript anthems, hymns, and incidental music assembled by Theodore Finney.

Among its most valuable collections are the scientific works of Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Edmond Halley, John Evelyn, and Digby. The Library also holds theological and philosophical collections of Thomas Cartwright, Protestant theology, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and David Hume.

Oscar Wilde Collection

Perhaps the Library's most valuable and extensive collection is the work by and relating to Oscar Wilde. It is considered the most comprehensive collection of its kind in the world. Clark originally purchased Wilde manuscripts from Wilde's son, Vyvyan Holland, among others. Today the collection includes photographs, original portraits, caricatures, playbills, and news cuttings. Most of the important Wilde studies in recent years have drawn heavily upon the Clark's resources. The Clark has also taken to collecting books and manuscripts of Wilde's literary circle and the decadent and modernist movements of the 1890s, including the most important editions of William Butler Yeats and many others.

Fellowships

Several types of fellowships are offered for graduate and postdoctoral scholars to study at the Clark Library. Among the most prestigious are the Ahmanson-Getty Fellowship, Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, Clark Dissertation Fellowship, Predoctoral Fellowship, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies /Clark Fellowship, Kanner Fellowship in British Studies, Clark Short-Term Fellowship, and Clark-Huntington Bibliographical Fellowship.

All fellowships are administered by UCLA's Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies. Each fellowship varies in stipend, duration, and qualification. All of the fellowships, however, require that the recipient make use of the Clark Library's collections.

External links

References

William Adrews Clark Memorial Library: Report of the First Decade, 1934-1944. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1946.

Academic libraries

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