New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

's Fales Library and Special Collections is located on the third floor of the

Elmer Holmes Bobst Library The Elmer Holmes Bobst Library ( ), often referred to simply as Bobst Library or just Bobst, is the main library at New York University (NYU) in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The library is located at 70 Washington Square South between LaGuardi ...

at 70 Washington Square South between LaGuardia Place and the Schwartz Plaza, in the

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

neighborhood of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. It houses nearly 200,000 volumes, and of archive and manuscript materials. It contains the Fales Collection of rare books and manuscripts in English and American literature, the Downtown Collection, the Food and Cookery Collection, and the general Special Collections from the NYU Libraries. The Tracey-Barry Gallery offers public exhibits of materials from the Library's collections. The '
Fales Collection
'' was given to NYU in 1957 by

DeCoursey Fales DeCoursey Fales (June 1, 1888 – June 19, 1966) was an American lawyer, banker, collector, bibliophile and yachtsman. DeCoursey was born in Saranac Lake, New York. He attended Harvard University, where he developed an intense love for Brit ...

in memory of his father, Haliburton Fales. It is especially strong in English literature from the middle of the 18th century to the present, documenting developments in the novel. Other related collections held in Fales include the Berol Collection of

Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequ ...

Materials, the Robert Frost Library, the Nelson F. Adkins collection of American Literature, and the manuscript collections of

Elizabeth Robins Elizabeth Robins (August 6, 1862 – May 8, 1952) was an actress, playwright, novelist, and suffragette. She also wrote as C. E. Raimond. Early life Elizabeth Robins, the first child of Charles Robins and Hannah Crow, was born in Louisville, ...

Peter Straub Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...

E. L. Doctorow Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (January 6, 1931 – July 21, 2015) was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known for his works of historical fiction. He wrote twelve novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama. They included ...

and

Erich Maria Remarque Erich Maria Remarque (, ; born Erich Paul Remark; 22 June 1898 – 25 September 1970) was a German-born novelist. His landmark novel ''All Quiet on the Western Front'' (1928), based on his experience in the Imperial German Army during World ...

. The '
Downtown Collection
'' documents the downtown New York city art, performance, film, and literary landscape from 1975 to the present. In addition to thousands of published books and magazines, the Downtown Collection includes extensive holdings of archival and manuscript material; film and video; original artwork; theatrical models; and other realia. Archival holdings range from the personal papers of writers such as

Dennis Cooper Dennis Cooper (born January 10, 1953) is an American novelist, poet, critic, editor and performance artist. He is best known for the ''George Miles Cycle'', a series of five semi-autobiographical novels published between 1989 and 2000 and describe ...

, Richard Foreman and

Lynne Tillman Lynne Tillman (born January 1, 1947) is a novelist, short story writer, and cultural critic. She is currently Professor/Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at the University at Albany and teaches at the School of Visual Arts' Art Cri ...

to the papers of publishing ventures such as High Risk Books and Between C & D to the archives of organizations such as

Creative Time Creative Time is a New York-based nonprofit arts organization. It was founded in 1974 to support the creation of innovative, site-specific, socially engaged artworks in the public realm, particularly in vacant spaces of historical and architectura ...

and

Mabou Mines Mabou Mines is an experimental theatre company founded in 1970 and based in New York City. Founding and history Mabou Mines was founded by David Warrilow, Lee Breuer, Ruth Maleczech, JoAnne Akalaitis, and Philip Glass, at the house of Akalai ...

and the

Gonightclubbing GoNightclubbing is a collaboration between video artists Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong, who worked together to document the New York punk rock scene beginning in 1977. Ivers had previously worked with Metropolis Video from 1975 until their dissolu ...

Archive of late 1970s punk rock video, photos, interviews and ephemera. An area of recent growth in Fales is the Food and Cookery Collection of well over 15,000 books. The personal libraries of

James Beard James Andrews Beard (May 5, 1903 – January 23, 1985) was an American chef, cookbook author, teacher and television personality. He pioneered television cooking shows, taught at The James Beard Cooking School in New York City and Seaside, ...

Cecily Brownstone Cecily Brownstone (18 April 1909 – 30 August 2005), was a food writer, who wrote several cookbooks and articles about food over a period of 39 years. Canadian-born, Brownstone was the Associated Press Food Editor from 1947 to 1986—for t ...

, and Dalia Carmel form the core of this collection which continues to expand. The Fales Library preserves manuscripts and original editions of books that are rare or important not only because of their texts, but also because of their value as artifacts. The Fales Library holds the personal papers and/or archives of the following, among others: *

John Canemaker John Cannizzaro Jr. (born 1943), better known as John Canemaker, is an American independent animator, animation historian, author, teacher and lecturer. In 1980, he began teaching and developing the animation program at New York University, Tisch S ...

* Jerome Charyn *

* Richard Foreman * Robert Hammond *

April Palmieri April Palmieri is an American photographer and musician who performed with a 12-piece all-woman percussion band, Pulsallama. During the early 1980s, the band played at such venues as the Mudd Club, the Pyramid, Danceteria, and Club 57 in New York ...

* David Wojnarowicz *

Kathleen Hanna Kathleen Hanna (born November 12, 1968) is an American singer, musician, artist, feminist activist, pioneer of the feminist punk riot grrrl movement, and punk zine writer. In the early-to-mid-1990s she was the lead singer of feminist punk band B ...

Sarah Jacobson Sarah Jacobson (August 25, 1971 – February 13, 2004) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Early life Jacobson was born in Connecticut, moved to New Jersey in 1975, then to Edina, Minnesota in 1982. She graduated with ho ...

*Pat Ivers *Emily Armstrong

External links

Fales Library Homepage and Finding Aids

BobCat
online catalog {{authority control Literary archives in the United States New York University University and college academic libraries in the United States Rare book libraries in the United States Special collections libraries in the United States