THE LEE COLLECTION

Voltaire, His Time, His Contemporaries.  An Enlightenment research, teaching, and exhibition resource of some 3200 volumes.
$800,000.00

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•  J. Patrick Lee was a scholar, a university administrator — and a dedicated collector of books and manuscripts by and about VOLTAIRE, his time, and his contemporaries. His richly textured collection of antiquarian materials including essays, poetry, epistles, biography, dictionaries, histories, short stories, plays, memoirs, and parodies totals approximately 3200 volumes representing approximately 2000 titles, and it is a testament to Dr. Lee’s knowledge of the field, his dedication to his collecting, his collection-shaping judgment, and his bibliophilic good taste. This is Voltaire with his supporters, disciples, and some of his precursors; here are his detractors and opponents; this is the Age of Enlightenment in its full, literary-philosophical robustness.

Offering serious research potential and standing also as a great resource to draw on for exhibitions and teaching across a variety of disciplines, the Lee collection embraces Voltairian text and illustrated materials both famous and obscure, both rare and “popular”/typical, in the full gamut of formats ranging from folio to twelvemo, in typography ranging from elegant to utilitarian, and dressed in diverse contemporary as well as later bindings — the bindings, often lovely. Numerous titles are not traced at all via WorldCat or COPAC; and others are reported as held in only one library worldwide, often the Bibliotheque National or the British Library; but also useful, here, is the simple illuminating gathering together not of individual rarities but of, e.g., 245 editions of Candide, 39 of Zadig (not counting those listed under “Contes et Romans”), 54 of the Dictionnaire Philosophique and 21 of La Henriade. Languages are French, English, and Italian, with other and “exotic” languages among the more modern books — creating a base for the study of the art of translation across time and cultures. Writers (other than Voltaire himself!) are male and female, analytical and passionate, contemporary to him and of later eras contemplating his legacy; as noted above, they are both critical and admiring. No fewer than 35 manuscripts are included, of which a number are letters in Voltaire’s own hand.

Clearly the faculty of the Departments of French, English, and Philosophy will find much to revel in, both along established research lines and also along avenues perhaps not previously contemplated.

Beyond this, however, the Lee collection will support variously focused studies of the history of political ideas, their dissemination, and dissent. It is a truism that as an icon of Enlightenment values — rationalism, freedom of speech and the press, tolerance — Voltaire was, along with Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, one of the philosophical minds and spirits first influencing the important thinkers of the French Revolution, then serving as an intellectual figure underlying the founding of the United States and the writing of its two most important political documents. It will be less obvious to most, but the collection is equally important for the increasingly pursued study of struggles for independence in Latin America — especially in South America where the philosophes had a strong following among the intellectuals of Venezuela and Chile, including Simon Bolivar's tutors. Moreover, when in 1808 the Portuguese court fled Lisbon for Rio de Janeiro, the French Enlightenment came along in the minds and the libraries of the Portuguese elite, for the ideas of the philosophes were entrenched in that stratum of the Luso intellectuals, as absolutely as the ideas of the French Revolution were abhorred and rejected.

Similar textual resources abound, in the collection, for cross disciplinary studies — some actually springing off from the above, and pursuing their twists and evolutions — in the areas of social reform, civil rights and liberties, abolition, colonialism and free trade. The study of the arguments and history of religious freedom and tolerance so decidedly relevant today finds also much fodder here; even, perhaps, the time is coming for direct study of the history of atheism/”atheism” — an exercise in which Voltaire’s works and the response to them as represented in this collection would be essential — which indeed they also are for the study not of “religious tolerance” but of religious INtolerance, his texts having been so often and so widely banned on religious grounds! Because Voltaire was interested in women and wrote about women, and because women were interested in Voltaire and wrote voluminously and splendidly back, the collection can additionally generate or support a variety of projects in international women’s studies. Translators include women — Anne-Elisabeth Schonewolf, Maria Isabel Azcoaga, and “Catherine Maria Dawson Bury Charleville, countess,” along with Tobias Smollett, Johann Frerking, William Henry Ireland, Richard Aldington, Ernest Dowson, John Lockman, Joseph Collyer, John Butt, and Donald Frame among others. (This is the sort of collection as to which, in an overview, one must rely much on variants of, “including . . . among others.”)

Textual researches are only one use of an active modern library collection, and it is hard to imagine any scholar or student of material culture not finding some topic of fruitful research in the Lee collection, whether as a starting point or as coda to work begun in other libraries. As one of the intellectual world’s indisputably Great Figures, Voltaire was published and republished in multiplicitous forms for diverse audiences that are, themselves, properly now of interest. Scholars and teachers of bibliography of the traditional sort will find here a collection rich in false and fictitious imprints; sammelbands in which major works are bound with minor ones and first editions are joined by later ones; productions from significant historical presses, expectably including Didot l’ aine, le jeune, et freres; original bindings of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries; provenanced volumes; limited editions in some quantity; and volumes displaying marks of readership. Newer-style students of the history of the book and material culture will be interested in these things for their own reasons, and they will also be drawn, for their own reasons, to those already-noted multiple editions of individual titles — gatherings that will in the first place have been interesting to those studying transmission of text. They will note that some editions of Voltaire’s works, clearly, were “got up” for popular readership, for female readership, even for children’s reading . . .

The illustrated books here include, among the modern ones, productions involving such artists as Paul Klee, Adrien Moreau, Clara Tice, Mahlon Blaine, P. Ledoux, Frtiz Kredel, Maurice van Moppes, Rockwell Kent, and Joann Sfar; the modern fine press books include entries from Nonesuch, Bodley Head, Three Sirens, Stinehour, and Richard Ellis. Among the limited editions, some are quite limited (1 of 100, 1 of 250, “No. 1 of 150") and some have additional interest as being facsimiles — or as being, of course, other sorts of “two-“ or “three-fers,” e.g., not only limited but issued from fine presses and beautifully illustrated. Scholars and students from Fine Arts departments will feel most fortunate!

It is to be specially stressed that in addition to supporting the scholarly, upper-level research that is the traditional core mission of a Special Collections library, the Lee Collection addresses in an impressive and magisterial way the crucial outreach and teaching role that has become a central raison d’etre of nearly all university and college libraries. The “hands on experience” with books is in greater demand among students today than it was a generation ago, digital surrogates having either whetted their interest or raised questions and points that only an original copy in Special Collections can answer. Rarity was once the watchword when considering the purchase of a large antiquarian collection and this collection very handsomely satisfies that important consideration, but the present emphasis on acquisition of books and manuscripts of use to multiple users of multiple sorts — one on one, in classes and seminars, and via exhibition — is also completely satisfied by the Lee Collection. Literary, philosophical, and historical scholarship — historical scholarship social, cultural, political, religious, fine arts, “material,” and more — will all be well served here, time after time and in myriad ways.

•  Please note that the Collection is being offered ONLY as a collection, intact; and please know that we will welcome your interest in it!

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The Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company