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The collection consists of several sub-divisions, such as bookplates with a printed date (over 300 bookplates, 1587-1800), ecclesiastical bookplates of the 17th and 18th centuries, and a large group relating to Cambridge and Oxford Universities (mostly 18th century). Well represented are bookplates of libraries, starting with a German bookplate, ca. 1580. Among the library bookplates of some significance are large dated German bookplates of the Royal Library, Munich, the earliest being dated 1614, the bookplate of the medical library, Frankfort, 1676, representing the view of a 17th century library, and a large collection of early American library bookplates.

Correspondence, documents and manuscripts from late seventeenth and eighteenth century France, especially from the French Revolution, collected by Sam Schaefler. Authors include J.B. Colbert Torcy and the Duchesse Du Lude. Many of the items from the French Revolution represent the work of the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security. French Revolutionary leaders represented in the collection include François-Antoine Boissy D'Anglas, Jean-Baptiste-Noel Bouchotte, Pierre Joseph Cambon, Lazare Carnot, Jean-Marie Collot D'Herbois, l'Abbʹe de Fauchet, Philippe-Antoine Merlin de Douai, Jean Victor Moreau. C.A. Prieur-Duvernois, and Antoine Joseph Santerre. In addition, the collection includes a letter from the Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted to Sir John Herschel, a letter by the French poet Romain Rolland, a document of the Philadelphia Artists' Fund Society of 1846 with signatures of its officers, and an autograph letter and a photograph of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.