The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, founded by Pierpont Morgan

From the Collection:

Alexander Pope

The text of An Essay on Man was the result of a tortuous composition process. Pope first made prose notes on the philosophical arguments he wished to put forth, then worked out couplets on scraps of paper and composed a first draft. On fresh sheets, shown here, he neatly copied the verses he had composed thus far and reworked them heavily. Another fair copy with further revisions followed. Even after the poem was published, Pope continued to refine it for later editions. Dr. Johnson, who studied examples of Pope's manuscripts, found them a source of delight for those who wish "to trace the mind from the rudeness of its first conceptions to the elegance of its last."

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Multimedia

Curator Roger Wieck discusses selections from the greatest of all Dutch illuminated manuscripts, the Hours of Catherine of Cleves. Click to play »

Rembrandt and Picasso, Mozart, Bob Dylan, Dickens and Hemingway, Gutenberg Bibles, and Babar the elephant, The Morgan Library & Museum is, in the words of The New York Times, "extra special, in a class of its own."

Located in midtown Manhattan at Madison Avenue and 36th Street, the Morgan houses one of the world's greatest collections of artistic, literary, and musical works, from ancient times to the medieval and Renaissance periods to the present day.

CORSAIR, the Morgan's online collection catalog, is available here.