Portuguese and Brazilian Books in the John Carter Brown Library,1537 to 1839

Anthony Grafton, among others, has written about the phenomenon, and historians in general know it well, that as important as the books or documents sought (but not always found) in libraries and archives may be, so too is the experience itself of visiting such institutions: of making time to read and reflect, of contemplating the shelves and consulting catalogues, and of speaking with librarians and meeting other readers. Gradually, one no longer is a stranger but becomes a member of the club, an institution “groupie” well known and welcomed. The John Carter Brown Library (www.jcbl.org) is one of these special places, capable of providing experiences that go far beyond mere access to books, even if those books are almost always beautiful and rare. Located in Providence in the state of Rhode Island, the John Carter Brown Library (or JCB) was founded in 1846 and has been located on the Brown University campus since 1901. It is an institution that is part of the same generation of various other independent research libraries that emerged in the U. S. between the late nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, including the Newberry Library (Chicago), the Huntington Library (San Marino, California), the Pierpont Morgan Library (New York), and the Folger Library (Washington, D. C.). What distinguishes these institutions (and there are dozens of others in the U. S.) is that they are not only repositories of printed and manuscript treasures but also centers for advanced research, offering hundreds of residential fellowships to scholars from many countries, organizing conferences and seminars, and publishing books and catalogues related to their collections. As such centers, the digital revolution does not threaten their existence because not only are the primary sources to be found there upon which historical research rests, i.e., the concrete original objects descended from the past, but they are also beehives of scholarly activity where one wants to be along with other researchers in residence. The majority of these private libraries were born of the will and money of men of industry, finance, and business whose collections naturally reflect their personal tastes, but these libraries also manifest the (many) opportunities afforded by the rare book market in the course of the past century. It is a familiar cultural phenomenon, although no longer as prevalent as it once was, that wealthy Americans could buy up tens of thousands of rare European imprints without much competition from the Continent itself. It is therefore not surprising that works essential to the study of the history of Portuguese expansion are held in these temples, as is the case, for example, of the Livro de Lisuarte de Abreu (ca. 1558-1564), some leaves of which were first acquired by J. Pierpont Morgan as early as 1912. Even to this day, the economic power of the United States, plus its extraordinary tradition of private philanthropy, combined with the knowledge of its directors and librarians, allows such institutions as the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota to have acquired in the past year rarities like a copy of Matteo Ricci’s magnificent world map (1602), for which it paid $1 million. Such is the universe of the John Carter Brown Library, which in December 2009 published an 800-page printed catalogue of a segment of its holdings, Portuguese and Brazilian Books in the John Carter Brown Library, 1537 to 1839, with a Selection of Braziliana Printed in Countries Other Than Portugal and