Secrets From The Vault

The Hidden Layers of the Codex Lippomano: A Study of the Earliest Plaquette Binding

In late 2023, the Morgan Library & Museum acquired Codex Lippomano (PML 199044) from the Sotheby’s auction of the T. Kimball Brooker collection. This manuscript is the earliest known example of a plaquette binding from the Italian Renaissance, integrating Classical antiquity and Islamic decorative styles within an Italian structure.

The Little Prince Turns 75: Reflections by Adrian Arturo Peña

The Little Prince, a story of an intergalactic traveler in search of meaningful connection, was published in New York seventy-five years ago today—on April 6, 1943. This guest post is by Adrian Arturo Peña, a student in CUNY’s Language Immersion Program (CLIP), whose class recently visited the Morgan with instructor Gretchen Irwin-Harada to view and discuss Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s draft manuscript and watercolor drawings for The Little Prince.

The mystery of a “spurious Dickens letter”

Last month, browsing the Bonhams auction catalogue Papers & Portraits: The Roy Davids Collection Part II, I came across a description of a three-page manuscript short story by Charles Thomas Clement James (1858–1905), a prolific author whose name and work were completely unknown to me. The story bears the Dickensian title “Concerning the Sinkingsop and Slush Railway” and the footnote accompanying the lot description is amusingly arch: “This manuscript is a fine example, the only one seen commercially, of the remarkable similarity in the handwritings of Charles Dickens and Charles James.

The Origins of Morgan Reference Collection Classification

When the Pierpont Morgan Library (today the Morgan Library & Museum) opened to the public on October 1, 1928, the largest part of its Reference Collection was shelved in its Reading Room, which occupied the east side of the newly constructed Annex. In 1929, according to Belle da Costa Greene, the Morgan’s first librarian and director, the room contained more than 8,000 books.

The Owl and the Pussey cat went to sea

Edward Lear, British landscape painter and writer, wrote many limericks and "nonsenses" (as he called them) for children. One of his most famous nonsense poems is "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat," shown here in his hand.

Lear ends this copy of his humorous poem with a note that he "meant to have illustrated it, but there ain't time."

Although The Morgan does not have Lear's illustration of his poem, we do have a sketch of the poem by Beatrix Potter. In an 1897 letter to a young boy named Noel Moore, Potter draws him a "picture of the owl and the pussy cat after they were married."

The Spiritualist Reverend

Reform movements took root as the Second Great Awakening swept across the United States. From abolition and temperance to labor and women’s rights, there was a call for the nation to be remade. By the 1840s, the political landscape was shifting and innovations in science were reinvigorating American culture.

The Titan and the Lion Dog

A pair of mythical beings, “Titan” and “Lion Dog,” offers an apt entry point to explore the connection between J. P. Morgan and his favorite Pekingese dog, Shun. The great financier’s legendary accomplishments frequently inspire outsized adjectives, and the fabled origins of the diminutive Pekingese conferred a mystical aura.

The Writings of a Temperance Poet

In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the sale and transport of alcohol. Repealed in 1933, this brief period in American history, known as Prohibition, created a cultural movement that defined a decade and was known for its speakeasies, mob runners, and bootlegging. The roots of Prohibition can be traced to 1826, and the founding of the American Temperance Society.

Theodore Roosevelt on his presidency: "In the end the boldness of the action fully justified itself."

Theodore Roosevelt was the second president of United States to write a book-length autobiography, but he was the first to give a lengthy account of his presidency or to give details about the private life of an American head of state.

Abraham Lincoln had written a few brief sketches of his life, and Ulysses S. Grant was the first to compose a full autobiography. But, written while the penniless Grant was dying of throat cancer in an attempt to ensure that his family would have a means of support after his death, his Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (published posthumously by Mark Twain) deals primarily with his military career.