This edition has 65 new images, making a total of 500. The original configurations were altered so that there is only one species per plate. The text is a revision of the Ornithological Biography, rearranged according to Audubon's Synopsis of the Birds of North America (1839).

A facsimile of an object of unknown authorship that has been the source of study and speculation for centuries and remains undecipherable to this day.

Examines a group of papyri held at Yale's rare book library, the Beinecke

The earliest known prison memoir by an African American writer—recently discovered and authenticated by a team of Yale scholars—sheds light on the longstanding connection between race and incarceration in America. “[A] harrowing [portrait] of life behind bars . . . part confession, part jeremiad, part lamentation, part picaresque novel (reminiscent, at times, of Dickens and Defoe).”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE In 2009, scholars at Yale University came across a startling manuscript: the memoir of Austin Reed, a free black man born in the 1820s who spent most of his early life ricocheting between forced labor in prison and forced labor as an indentured servant. Lost for more than one hundred and fifty years, the handwritten document is the first known prison memoir written by an African American. Corroborated by prison records and other documentary sources, Reed’s text gives a gripping first-person account of an antebellum Northern life lived outside slavery that nonetheless bore, in its day-to-day details, unsettling resemblances to that very institution. Now, for the first time, we can hear Austin Reed’s story as he meant to tell it. He was born to a middle-class black family in the boomtown of Rochester, New York, but when his father died, his mother struggled to make ends meet. Still a child, Reed was placed as an indentured servant to a nearby family of white farmers near Rochester. He was caught attempting to set fire to a building and sentenced to ten years at Manhattan’s brutal House of Refuge, an early juvenile reformatory that would soon become known for beatings and forced labor. Seven years later, Reed found himself at New York’s infamous Auburn State Prison. It was there that he finished writing this memoir, which explores America’s first reformatory and first industrial prison from an inmate’s point of view, recalling the great cruelties and kindnesses he experienced in those places and excavating patterns of racial segregation, exploitation, and bondage that extended beyond the boundaries of the slaveholding South, into free New York. Accompanied by fascinating historical documents (including a series of poignant letters written by Reed near the end of his life), The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict is a work of uncommon beauty that tells a story of nineteenth-century racism, violence, labor, and captivity in a proud, defiant voice. Reed’s memoir illuminates his own life and times—as well as ours today. Praise for The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict “One of the most fascinating and important memoirs ever produced in the United States.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, The Washington Post “Remarkable . . . triumphantly defiant . . . The book’s greatest value lies in the gap it fills.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Reed displays virtuosic gifts for narrative that, a century and a half later, earn and hold the reader’s ear.”—Thomas Chatterton Williams, San Francisco Chronicle “[The book’s] urgency and relevance remain undiminished. . . . This exemplary edition recovers history without permanently trapping it in one interpretation.”—The Guardian “A sensational, novelistic telling of an eventful life.”—The Paris Review “Vivid and painful.”—NPR “Lyrical and graceful in one sentence, burning with fury and hellfire in the next.”—Columbus Free Press

Originally published by Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 1988.

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University celebrates its fortieth anniversary with an exhibition and with this book that is itself a celebration of a great architectural monument of modernism photographed by Richard Cheek. This striking building contains a stunning collection of collections, examples from which were photographed by Stan Godlewski, and this celebratory volume also contains a portfolio of photographs taken at the time of the dedication forty years ago by Ezra Stoller and a handful of historic photographs from collections here. The text has a number of essays that together capture the many resourses that constitute this library distinguished throughout the world for its collections and for its support of research and publications and teaching. Following an introductory essay by Barbara A. Shailor written from the perspective of one who came to join the staff as a graduate student employed to catalogue ancient manuscripts. This she did for two decades before leaving for university teaching and a deanship before returning here recently as director. The history of the design, construction, and impact of the building is acheived in a critical and appreciative essay by Patrick L. Pinnell, practicing architect and planner, who carries the story from the selection of Gordon Bunshaft as architect to the present place of this magnificent building at the center of te Yale Campus. Next comes a memoir by Marjorie G. Wynne about the days before there was a Beinecke Library when the rare books and manuscripts were in the Rare Book Room at Sterling Library until she and that collection crossed the street forty years ago. Following these are essays about the individual strengths of the collections that together are the Beinecke's chief joys. Robert G. Babcock describes early manuscripts and books while the modern counterparts are featured by Vincent Giroud who also contributed an essay on music in the Beinecke. A brief section on playing cards by Timothy G. Young is included. Patricia C. Willis discusses the Collection of American Literature and Stephen Parks describes the Osborn Collection. German Literature is treated by Christa Sammons and George A. Miles treats the Western Americana Collection. The Beinecke Library is all this and more, perhaps the most distinguished gathering of literary and historic material of any private university in the Americas and perhaps in the world. Supported wholly from endowments and managed as a financially independent unit within the Yale library system, it serves a broad community of users. It has an active fellowship program bringing researchers from across the campus and across the world to this repository of printed books and manuscripts as well as extensive collections of maps, prints, photographs, and drawings in the fields of language, literature, history, religion, philosophy, art, music, economics, and the natural sciences. The book itself is a cause for celebration, designed by Greer Allen and composed and printed to the high standards that he earlier had exercised as University Printer. The result of all of these efforts is a triumph of text and illustrations combined in a generous format to delight the eye and the mind.

The Vinland Map, dated to about 1440 AD, before Columbus landed in the Americas, is a world map that shows the north-east American coast. This new edition reprints unaltered the original text and discusses the map's authenticity, provenance and compositional and structural aspects.

The histories of the North American West and photography have been intertwined since photography reached America. From the middle of the 19th century, images of the West have continuously played a significant role in defining the ways the region is perceived not only within America but around the world. Eye on the West presents the work of seventeen contemporary photographers of the West, including David Plowden, Laura McPhee, Miguel Gandert, Karen Halverson, Toba Tucker, Richard Buswell, John Willis, David Ottenstein, Lauren Henkin, and Will Wilson. Beautiful reproductions of 34 photographs are accompanied by brief essays by George Miles and by the artists themselves, contributing to multiple conversations about how visual art continues to reflect and shape our understanding of Western American society, culture, and politics. Distributed for the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Exhibition Schedule: The Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscripts Library, Yale University (09/01/18-12/16/18)