Cataloging is now available online for most of the nearly 10,000 Islamic manuscripts in the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. These extraordinary holdings of Islamic manuscripts constitute the premier collection of Islamic manuscripts in the Western Hemisphere and among the finest in the world. About two-thirds of these were the gift of Robert Garrett, Class of 1897. The online records have been created as part of the Islamic Manuscripts Cataloging and Digitization Project, to improve access to these rich collections and share them worldwide through digital technology. Generous support from the David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Project has funded this ongoing effort. Researchers can now locate manuscripts by searching the Library’s online catalog. The Library has digitized 200 manuscripts in the Princeton Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts.

Over the past two years, the Princeton University Library has created online biblio­graphic records covering its collections of Arabic manuscripts in the Garrett and New Series. These had previously been only described in three printed catalogs: Descriptive Catalog of the Garrett Collection of Arabic Manuscripts in the Princeton University Library (P. K. Hitti, N. A. Faris, and B. `Abd al-Malik), Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts (Yahuda Section) in the Garrett Collection (R. Mach), and Handlist of Arabic Manuscripts (New Series) in the Princeton University Library (R. Mach and E. Ormsby). Over two-thirds of the Library’s some 10,000 volumes of Islamic manuscripts are described in these catalogs. The catalogs were converted to XML format, and the resulting files were then edited for accuracy and consistency—they now have authorized names, properly romanized titles, and appropriate subject headings. The files were then imported into the Library’s online catalog. Still underway is an effort to link records that describe multi-text volumes.

The Third Series, comprising over 750 volumes in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Urdu, and Jawi, has been completely cataloged, and a finding aid has been created for the William McElwee Miller Collection of Bābī Writings and Other Iranian Texts, 1846-1923, comprised of 47 volumes of writings of the Bāb, Subḥ-i Azal, and Bahá’u’lláh, and their respective followers. The collection also includes Sufi texts and an anti-Islamic polemic writings. The Miller collection has been digitized, largely from microfilm, and is being made available online by the Library as a service to scholarship. File sizes are large (30-590 MB) and may take some time to download.

For more information about the cataloging, contact Denise L. Soufi, Islamic Manuscripts Cataloger, at delsoufi@princeton.edu; for information about the overall project, contact Don C. Skemer, Curator of Manuscripts, at dcskemer@princeton.edu.

Botanical treatise in Arabic. Islamic Manuscripts, Garrett no. 583H. Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. Not to be reproduced without the permission of the Princeton University Library.

A group of recently rediscovered watercolors by British painter Gwen John (1876–1939) are on exhibit in the Eighteenth-Century Window of Firestone Library from November 21 through December 31. Thanks to new research by Professor Anna Gruetzner Robins, University of Reading (UK), two albums containing 23 unsigned watercolors have been identified as the work of  Gwen John. The albums are in the extensive papers of the British poet and critic Arthur Symons (1865–1945), preserved in the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. Gwen John was the sister of British artist Augustus John (1878–1961) and the one-time lover and model of French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917). She is now recognized as one of the most important painters of her generation. Made during the artist’s productive years, beginning in 1917, many of the watercolors depict nuns, women parishioners, and orphaned girls in the Catholic church at Meudon, the Paris suburb where Gwen John lived for nearly 30 years. Almost all of these subjects are viewed from the back. Other watercolors in the album portray a woman in a train carriage, a woman wearing a striking boa, and a black cat in a window. A few of the watercolors have pencil sketches on the reverse. Gwen John gave the albums to Symons in June 1920. Both were natives of Pembrokeshire, in South Wales.

In an article just published in the Princeton University Library Chronicle, Professor Robins shows the relationship of the Princeton albums to two albums once belonging to the New York attorney and art collector John Quinn (1870–1924) and to works in British institutions. Robins notes, “Symons and John belonged to interconnecting networks that brought artists, writers, actors, gallery owners, and collectors together in the increasingly international world of Paris, London, and New York….Gwen John’s oil painting has undergone a major reassessment in recent years. The discovery of the two Symons albums makes a considerable contribution to an understanding of her greatness.” The American painter and art collector A. E. Gallatin (1881–1952) acquired the papers and albums from the widow of Arthur Symons and donated them to the Princeton University Library in 1951.

For more information, please contact Don C. Skemer, Curator of Manuscripts, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, at dcskemer@princeton.edu.

Gwen John, untitled watercolor. Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. Not to be reproduced without the permission of the Princeton University Library.