Core Curriculum : Literature Humanities

Columbia University’s commitment to the Core Curriculum extends to the University Libraries' special collections.  Columbia University Libraries preserve and provide access to important editions of, and in some cases autograph manuscripts by, many of the authors taught in the Core Curriculum. Additionally, the collections include subsequent editions, translations, and adaptations, which demonstrate the transmission and reception of these works across centuries and attest to their continuing importance.

These online exhibitions were created as part of an Association of Research Libraries CEP Fellowship Summer 2011 based in Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The RBML staff welcomes Columbia undergraduates who would like to follow up on a potential research question related to any of these items to consult them in person. Instructions for using the library's collections can be found here.

See also the exhibit on the Core Curriculum's course on Contemporary Civilization

Exhibit Curator

Karla Nielsen

Homer »

from papyrus fragments to Chapman's Homer

Greek Histories »

Erasmus' Herodotus and Hobbes' Thucydides

Greek Drama »

Aristophanes from the fifteenth century to the twentieth

Bibles »

manuscript, Gutenberg and associates, polyglot, vernacular, fine press

Virgil »

medieval manuscript ; Baskerville

Ovid »

Ovid illuminated, moralized, and illustrated

Dante »

1488 Italian Divina commedia ; 1902 British fine press Inferno

Montaigne »

Robert Louis Stevenson's copy

Shakespeare »

First Folio ; Tate King Lear ; model of the Fortune Theater

Cervantes »

First English Translation of Books One and Two

Jane Austen »

1813 Egerton edition of Pride and Prejudice

Virginia Woolf & the Hogarth Press »

Virginia Woolf as author and publisher

Columbia University Libraries / Rare Book & Manuscript Library / Butler Library, 6th Fl. / 535 West 114th St. / New York, NY 10027 / (212) 854-5590 / rbml@libraries.cul.columia.edu