Continental Books

The Folger seeks primary source materials in European civilization in the Renaissance and early modern period, especially:

• as they help illuminate English culture
• as they illuminate reading and writing habits (e.g. writing manuals, writing tables, annotated copies, Continental books with English provenance)
• as they build existing core collections such as: Festival Books, Herbals, Reformation, Italian drama, emblem books
• as they come from significant printers such as Aldus, de Bry, de Colines, the Estiennes, Fine, Froben, Giolito, Plantin, and Verard

Priority gaps to be filled

• Items on offline desiderata lists (after the lists have been reviewed: card files and typewritten lists in Acq Office need to be made available in electronic form, and checked against existing holdings)

Primary Continental Subject Areas:

Original language of translations

• Foreign language sources for English-language translations of STC and Wing period
• Foreign language sources for plays adapted into English in the eighteenth century

History

Political

• French political pamphlets, especially late sixteenth through seventeenth century, including Mazarinades
• Dutch pamphlets, especially sixteenth and seventeenth century (based on Knuttel catalog)
• Contemporary writings about European courts and rulers, especially in France, Germany, and Italy; instructions for rulers

Military

• Military organization and campaigning
• Firearms and explosives

Social

• Educational manuals
• Conduct books
• How-to manuals (tailoring, lace-making)
• Dictionaries and phrase books

History of Reading and Writing

• Writing manuals, writing tables
• Books and pamphlets on censorship and revealing censorship practices

Literature (excluding Drama; see under Theater)

• Emblem books
• Poetry
• Authors especially collected:
  • Ariosto
  • Cervantes
  • Erasmus
  • Montaigne
  • Tasso

Religion

• German Reformation with emphasis on Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, Zwingli, and other reformers on the continent
• French church history with emphasis on the Edict of Nantes, its revocation, and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre
• Catholic church, especially as related to Protestantism, and English Catholic expatriates

• Continental herbals, fifteenth through seventeenth centuries
• Major treatises on medicine and human anatomy (see offline desiderata)
• Natural history (see offline desiderata)
• Major titles in architecture and the development of technology (see offline desiderata)
• Accounting and arithmetic (as it relates to business and commerce)

Theater and Spectacle

• Festival books, especially from Germany, the Low Countries, France, and Italy
• French drama, especially seventeenth-century: editions of Moliere, Corneille, and others
• Italian drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: comprehensively
• Classical drama printed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
• Dutch seventeenth-century drama and theater history
• Spanish drama, especially Lope de Vega, and Calderon
• Books on the history and development of the theater in Europe
• Foreign language sources for plays adapted into English in the eighteenth century
• Continental editions of Shakespeare 

• Sixteenth and seventeenth-century accounts of travels by Europeans to lands outside of Europe, including Jesuit travel narratives, and books with maps
• Geographical books with maps for European countries and cities
• Accounts of Continental travelers to England
• Navigation