Napoleon

More than 120 volumes devoted to the life and career of Napoleon Bonaparte were recently donated to the library by Harry E. A. Zimmermann, whose copy of John Booth's Battle of Waterloo (1815) with its magnificent colored engraving adorned the exhibit of bicentennial gifts to the library. The Booth title is far from the only early work in the collection, however, which includes a number of contemporary "memoirs" relating to Bonaparte as well as contemporary accounts of various military campaigns. Two of the collection's highlights, however, are equally if not more important for their literary rarity than for their historical contribution. The library's nearly comprehensive collection of the works of C. S. Forester was strengthened by another copy of his Napoleon and His Court, a 1924 potboiler of the "popular history" genre; and our growing strength in Sir Walter Scott's works was materially enhanced by a fine set of the 1827 Paris piracy of his Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, a fine pendant to the former Jerome Kern copy in original boards of the English first edition which we had already.

The Zimmermann gift provides strong support for the collection of works on Napoleon donated some years ago by George Abell. And it has been itself enhanced by the yet more recent gift by William S. Abell of a copy of the first edition of William Combe's lengthy satirical poem on the life of Bonaparte, published in 1815 with 30 hand-colored engravings by George Cruikshank.