Old and new

October 31, 2018

The books the Lewises kept in the Old Library of the Cowles House and guest bedrooms, mostly nineteenth-century authors’ sets and twentieth-century fiction, are getting new attention. In August Catalog Assistant Eileen Horansky completed the cataloging and reclassing of over one thousand titles and oversaw two summer workers as they created call tags for and barcoded approximately 1950 volumes now housed in the New Library. Eileen then turned her attention to the remaining “bedroom” books in the stacks. She completed the cataloging and classification of nearly 610 titles between August and October. Among the happy discoveries was a first edition Beatrix Potter book, a volume signed by Henry James, and, in the New Library, books owned by the architect Theodate Pope and by Rotha Quillinan, William Wordsworth’s goddaughter. Perhaps the most unique find was the “Pirate’s Log” book, written by George Plimpton for a party given by Jacqueline Kennedy at Hammersmith Farm in September 1965. All can now be discovered in Yale’s online library catalog and requested for use in the Reading Room.