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Printing and Publishing in Library Special Collections

LSC has holdings of printed and manuscript collections supporting research in the history of printing, the graphic arts, bibliography, the book trade, fictitious imprints (1600-1900), and emblem books from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.

The Abraham Wolf Spinoza Collection

In 1950, UCLA Library Special Collections acquired en bloc the library of the late Professor Abraham Wolf, Head of the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of London. At the time, the library was the largest private collection of works by and about Baruch de Spinoza, and included Spinoza's works in many editions, important biographical and critical works about his writing, and a collection of titles of books Spinoza was known to have read.

Among the more important items in the collection are the Codex Townley, thought to be the earliest manuscript of J.M. Lucas's La vie de feu Monsieur Spinoza; one of the two known copies of the first edition of Lucas's La vie et l'esprit de Mr. Benoit de Spinoza; and issues A through D of Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus, not recorded in Linde.

David S. Zeidberg
former Head of UCLA Library Special Collections
May 1990

(from the introduction in the PDF below)