J. Pierpont Morgan’s new Library was a treasury, not a place to curl up with a good book. In 1908, after a London Times journalist was offered a rare look inside, the New York Times printed this breathless front-page headline:
MR. MORGAN’S GREAT LIBRARY . . . One of the Chief Treasure Houses of the World. PARADISE OF THE BOOKMAN Bewildering Array of Noble Products of the Minds and Hands of Many Centuries. MORGAN CALLED A GENIUS “The Most Wonderful of All Collections by the Most Wonderful Collector, Perhaps, of Any Time.”
Hype and hyperbole aside, it was true that Morgan had gathered a “bewildering array” of bibliographic treasures and works of art. On view here are just a few of the medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts, rare printed books and bindings, literary and historical manuscripts, drawings, and prints the Times reporter saw during that early visit. Morgan had acquired them all (and much more) largely in the space of a decade. Morgan’s Library, the correspondent declared, was a place where “all the dreams of the bibliophile come true.”
Page from a Rajput manuscript of the Ragamala, created in India, probably Jaipur, ca. 1800. The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.211.