Illustrated Books

Illustrated books are an integral part of the history of graphic art. The collection comprises 5,000 volumes printed in Europe and the Americas, dating from 1471 to the present time. In addition to illustrated literary, historical, and religious texts, it includes works on architecture, science, printmaking techniques, calligraphy, and all aspects of ornament and design, among numerous other subjects. All print media are represented, from fifteenth-century woodcuts to twenty-first-century digital technologies. Particular strengths include technical printmaking treatises, eighteenth-century French illustrated books, and British book illustration of the 1860s.