The treasures of the Library's special collections spend most of their lives locked away in temperature-controlled vaults. But in this edition, the doors swing open and the reader can delight in some of the rarities that have made The New York Public Library a mecca for scholars and lovers of literature from around the world. I mean still, in my own contracted way to do my best. Imperfect my best will be, and poor . . . Editions The W. T. H. Howe copy of the second edition of Jane Eyre .
Great libraries become great through the largesse of private donors.
The private library of the ardent bibliophile W. T. H. Howe is one of the more astonishing collections to have been presented to the Library during its first century. Jane surrounded by the great moors. Commissioned by a prominent French collector, this splendid edition was limited to only 495 copies, of which nos. One of the few women of her generation to be able to make a living as a lithographer, Gabain and her husband, the well-known English printmaker John Copley, lived for some years in Italy, where both were inspired to do some of their finest work. Whatever our novelists may say, this book proves once more that there are infinite resources for fiction in the depiction of upright morals and straightforward events of real life and the simple and open development of passions.