Early Modern Bibliophilia: A Celebration of the Chrzanowski Collection

A symposium organized by Helen Deutsch and Anna Chen (University of California, Los Angeles)

In fall 2009 Paul Chrzanowski, a physicist and bibliophile in California, donated his collection of seventy-two early English books to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Nine additional titles followed in 2014, and twenty-one more in 2018. It is the most valuable and important donation made to the Clark Library since the original donation of the founder’s collection, deeded in 1926 and transferred to UCLA’s custody in 1934.

Paul Chrzanowski set out nearly thirty years ago to acquire texts that Shakespeare likely read or could have read in some form. Some are identified as source books that Shakespeare used to write his plays; many are not but remain important to the development of the English language and literature as well as societal changes in the English Tudor period in which Shakespeare lived. This important collection includes older literary texts by Boccaccio, Gower, and Chaucer; English translations of classical works and European poetry, including Plutarch, Tasso, and Ariosto; and works of immediate predecessors and contemporaries such as Sydney, Spenser, Marlowe, Jonson, and Drayton. The Paul Chrzanowski Collection is also strong in religious texts—from pre-Reformation Catholic treatises to English Bibles and a Book of Common Prayer—and English Chronicles—from Higden’s Polychronicon to Holinshed.

This symposium, which was held on November 15, 2019, celebrated the Paul Chrzanowski Collection with a series of brief presentations by UCLA faculty, librarians, graduate students, and special guests, who each spoke about their favorite items in the collection. Paul Chrzanowski presented closing remarks and reflected upon the works discussed. A selection of works from the collection was displayed before and after the presentations.

Speakers’ remarks can be accessed by clicking on the links in the program schedule below.

For additional information about the Chrzanowski Collection, please see

https://clarklibrary.ucla.edu/collections/tudor/chrzanowski/

https://www.1718.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/newsletter59.pdf

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Program

1:30 p.m.
Selections from the Paul Chrzanowski Collection displayed in the North Book Room

 2:00 p.m.
Welcome
Helen Deutsch, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library and Department of English, UCLA
Anna Chen, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA

2:05 p.m.
Panel One

Anna Chen, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA
Villanies Discovered by Lanthorne and Candle-Light, Thomas Dekker (London: [by William Stansby] for John Busby, 1616).

Marguerite Happe, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library and Graduate Student, Department of English, UCLA
The Scourge of Villanie: Three Bookes of Satyres, John Marston (London: Printed by J[ames]. R[oberts]. And are to be sold by John Buzbie, 1598).

Robin Kello, Graduate Student, Department of English, UCLA
1577, the Firste Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, Raphael Holinshed. London: Iohn Hunne, 1577.

Rebecca Fenning Marschall, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA
The names and creacions of all or the moste of the nobilitie from William the Conquerour untill the yeare of grace 1586. Manuscript. England: ca. 1590.

Muriel C. McClendon, Department of History, UCLA
Letter, Signed at the Head, to Lord Paget, Queen Elizabeth (1561).

3:00 p.m.
Q & A

3:15 p.m.
Coffee Break

3:30 p.m.
Panel Two

Bronwen Wilson, Department of Art History, UCLA
Actes and monuments of these latter and perillous dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein ar comprehended and described the great persecutions [and] horrible troubles…, John Foxe. Imprinted at London: By John Day, dwelling ouer Aldersgate, 1563.
Acts and Monuments Of matters most speciall and memorable, happening in the Church, with an universall Historie of the same, John Foxe. London: Printed for the Company of Stationers, 1641.

Nina Schneider, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA
A Suruay of London. : Contayning the originall, antiquity, increase, moderne estate, and description of that citie, written in the yeare 1598.  John Stow, 1525?-1605.

Arie Nair, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library and Graduate Student, Fielding School of Public Health, UCLA
Itinerarium, Paul Hentzner (Nuremberg: Abraham Wagenmann for the author, 1612).

Carol Sandberg, Michael R. Thompson Rare Books
Thus endeth the prologue of this book named. Cord’yal. Whiche treteth of the four last and final thinges that ben to come…, Gerardus de Vliederhoven. Westminster: William Caxton, 1479.

Helen Deutsch, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library and Department of English, UCLA
The .xv. Bookes of P. Ouidius Naso, entytuled Metamorphosis, translated by Arthur Golding (London: William Seres, 1567).

4:20 p.m.
Q & A

4:35 p.m.
Paul Chrzanowski, Bibliophile and Physicist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Closing Remarks

4:50 p.m.
Reception
Selections from the Paul Chrzanowski Collection displayed in the North Book Room

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There is no charge for this event. Advance booking is requested.