Rare Books

A collection of 44 volumes and memorabilia was received as a gift from Mrs. John P. Poe. [The donor was Lydia Richmond Poe (1897-1994), a Princeton resident and wife of First National Bank president, John Prentiss Poe II (b. 1900)].

Included are an extra-illustrated copy of the Didot, 1795 edition of Voltaire's La Pucelle d'Orléans and a copy of the Boston, 1798 edition of Southey's epic Joan of Arc in a binding by Henry Bilson Legge. (H.B. Legge worked in Boston from 1798, or perhaps earlier, until his death in 1803. Cf. Hannah D. French,  Bookbinding in Early America, [Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1986], pp. 52-57.). For announcement of this gift see the Princeton University Library Chronicle XXVII, 3 (Spring, 1966) p. 194 [full text].