Rare Polonica in The New York Public Library: Books of the Fifteenth–Eighteenth Centuries: Introduction

Abstract

The New York Public Library (NYPL) holds one of North America's largest and oldest collections of books pertaining to the Slavic, Baltic, East European and Eurasian languages and peoples. The present catalog describes 514 volumes dating from the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries held by the NYPL. The following categories of material are included: books printed in the Polish‐Lithuanian Commonwealth; books printed outside of the homelands by Polish printers; titles by ethnic Polish authors, regardless of place of imprint or language of publication; works by foreign authors printed in the Polish language, or on subjects connected with Poland and/or the Rzeczpospolita. The catalog includes incunabula and 62 works of the sixteenth century. This article was originally published by Norman Ross Publishing, LLC. as the introduction to Marianna Czapnik, ed., Rare Polonica in the New York Public Library: Books of the 15th–18th Centuries, based on materials compiled by Robert H. Davis, Jr., 2001, pp. 7–15. This article is copyrighted 2001 by The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, and is reprinted with permission.