From the Library of...

Just recently, our processing specialist undertook the daunting task of reprocessing the Bookplates Collection at Rauner Library. The collection contains more than twenty thousand bookplates, a few bookplate sale catalogs, brochures, leaflets, and Harold Goddard Rugg's correspondence with dealers and collectors. The collection began in 1928 when Josiah Minot Fowler, a member of Dartmouth College's class of 1900, donated the F. J. Libbie collection of bookplates to Dartmouth College. He also commissioned two brass plates dedicating his gift to the memory of his parents George R. Fowler and Isabel Minot Fowler. Fowler’s gift contained about 3,900 early American plates, 3,000 modern American plates, 250 American proofs, 300 Canadian plates and about 7,500 English and foreign plates. Each plate was mounted on white cards, arranged alphabetically and stamped with Fowler's name.

In 1945, Arthur F. Gray and Arthur H. Gray 1911, donated their collection of bookplates which contained about 8,000 plates. That donation was facilitated by Bremer Whidden Pond, a member of the class of 1906. Each of the plates were mounted on gray cards, stamped "Gray," and interfiled with the existing Fowler collection. Since 1945, other bookplates have been added to the collection, including donations by Dr. Mary Adams in 1969, and by Harold G. Rugg, who also solicited additional bookplates from donors and bought many from dealers. Some of the more notable bookplates are shown here and include Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, William Butler Yeats, and Robert Frost. Other notable bookplates in the collection once belonged to Charlie Chaplin, most of the Founding Fathers (including Hamilton and Washington), and FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt.

The finding aid for the collection isn't public-facing yet. Until it is, you can look through the bookplates of notable figures by coming to Special Collections and asking to see MS-1137, Box 42.