In commemoration of the 30th anniversary of The New York Public Library’s Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, the Library presents a new exhibition, Splendour Among Shadows: Celebrating 30 Years of the Pforzheimer Collection at The New York Public Library. The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle is one of the most prominent repositories for the study of British Romanticism. Scholars from around the world, as well as high school classes, artists, and historians, visit the Library to explore its holdings. It is also one of the most narrowly focused of the Library’s special collections.
At its heart are the literary remains and letters of one extraordinary English family and their wide-ranging social network: the radical poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822); his second wife, the novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851); Mary Shelley’s parents, the philosopher William Godwin (1756–1836) and the pioneering feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797); and other writers both celebrated and unknown. Originally part of the much larger personal library of Carl H. Pforzheimer (1879–1957), a New York investment banker and philanthropist, the collection was given to the Library in 1986 by the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation, Inc. Most of the collection’s books, manuscripts, prints, and objects are British and were created between 1790 and 1830. Yet within these geographic and chronological limits is a rich source of scholarship on subjects far beyond literature—extending to philosophy, science, politics, music, and beyond.
Today, 30 years later, the Library still follows the acquisition policy of its original owner: to buy elusive editions and unpublished manuscripts of the immediate circle when possible, as well as humbler treasures—from letters to diaries, recipe books, wine bills, and so on—that deepen and enrich our understanding of these writers and the British Romantic era.
