Gifts

New Acquisitions Expand Cotsen Children’s Library Collection

June 1, 2006

Trustee Emeritus Lloyd E. Cotsen ’50 Donates More than 33,000 Items

With the arrival in Princeton of two 18-wheelers filled with rare books, children’s games, and other material, the University’s extraordinary Cotsen Children’s Library collection just grew by one-third.

The latest arrivals—some 33,000 items worth more than $16 million—boost to more than 100,000 the number of objects in the collection. Delivered earlier this year, they are the last major transfer of material to Princeton from an esteemed children’s literature collection in Los Angeles begun more than 40 years ago by Trustee Emeritus Lloyd E. Cotsen ’50, when he began buying items to nurture a love of reading in his children. Cotsen has given the University not only the collection, but the children’s library at Firestone in which it has been housed since 1997, as well as an endowment for research, publications, and programs about children’s literature.

“For the first time, all of the riches of the collection are available for study and exhibition to the Princeton community and the scholarly world at large,” said Ben Primer, Associate University Librarian for Rare Books and Special Collections. “This has made a reality of Mr. Cotsen’s dream of a living library which is also an international center for the study of illustrated children’s books. No one has collected more widely in terms of languages and countries around the globe.”

Charged with overseeing the unpacking of the material is Andrea L. Immel, the children’s library curator. “It’s like Christmas, only better, because there are so many presents under the tree that it will take all year to unwrap them all,” she says.

The new arrivals include a major collection of Chinese and Japanese publications—“unique in North America,” Immel says—from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, as well as virtually all the children’s books published in East Germany during its 45-year life span. There are drawings by such major children’s book illustrators as the 19th-century British artist Walter Crane and Caldecott Medal winner Leo Politi. Photographically illustrated books figure in the collection, too, with examples by pioneering artists such as Edward Steichen and Margaret Bourke-White. 

“Unpacking every box is a surprise,” Immel says, “as who knows what kind of treasures will be inside.”