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Plan of the Grolier Club Library and arrangement of collections, ca. 1918
00-08 General Bibliography
 The founders of the Grolier Club originally intended the Library to be a working reference collection of standard bibliographical works and books relating to the art of printing. It is still so used, and although the scope of the Library has grown in succeeding decades, author, title, and subject bibliographies retain a central place. In addition to current works, the collection includes many rare and early examples, such as Johannes Trithemius' 1494 Liber de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (left), the first bibliography to be compiled as a work of reference.
04 Bookselling
The Grolier Club is pre-eminent among libraries documenting the buying, selling and collecting of books. The research core of the Library is a collection of over sixty thousand bookseller and book auction catalogues, perhaps the largest (and certainly the most accessible) archive in America of this notoriously rare and ephemeral material, and much consulted by book historians. The collection includes a large number of important early examples, including a 1643 French inventory of the library of Jean de Cordes; the first recorded English book auction catalogue (the Lazarus Seaman sale, London, 1676, right); and the very rare 1772 list of American bookseller Henry Knox, one of only two copies known. Many of these catalogues bear contemporary annotations concerning buyers and prices, making them doubly valuable for those trying to trace the provenance of particular books. Of equal value in their way, however, are the many thousands of obscure and unrecorded catalogues, valuable raw data in the study of the movement of books (and therefore knowledge and culture) in America and elsewhere. The Library also maintains comprehensive runs of catalogues from the major European and American houses, supplemented by archival collections documenting the activities of important dealers.
04.4 Bookseller catalogues
One of the largest collections in the Grolier Club Library. The general goal is the preservation of catalogues which have value for bibliographical study, based on the importance of the material catalogued, or the high standards of description, or the presence of unique material, such as manuscripts and autographs. The Grolier Club collections are classified by country, and sub-arranged into four chronological groups: up to 1850, 1851 to 1900, 1901 to 1950, and 1951 to date. The historical collection includes some of the very earliest known bookseller catalogues (John Leggatt's catalogue of 1637, and William London's 1658 Most Vendible Books, for example), and there are complete runs of almost all the major American, English and European dealers down to the present day. The modern catalogue runs are complemented by the business papers of firms such as Morgand et Fatout, E.P. Goldschmidt, and John Fleming, as well as the archives of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA) and AB/Bookman's Weekly.
05 Book auctions
05.4 Book auction catalogues
 With bookseller catalogues, catalogues of book auctions form the core of the Library's research collection. Auction catalogues from all countries are represented, but the Library's holdings are particularly rich in English, American and French sales. The Club owns a high proportion of the 17th-century English sale catalogues listed in the British Museum List of Catalogues of English Book Sales 1676-1900, for instance, and these are supplemented by extensive holdings of significant 18th-century sales as well. The collection of 19th-century English sales is quite fine, highlighted by important copies of catalogues annotated by Sir Thomas Phillipps, William Morris, Guglielmo Libri, and other famous collectors, as well as nearly complete runs of auction houses such as Puttick & Simpson, and Sotheby's. The collection of American auction sales is by no means comprehensive, but a number of the most notable early sales recorded in American Book Auction Catalogues (compiled by former Club Librarian George McKay) are represented, including Buckminster (1812), Everett and Tichnor (1815), Jefferson (1829), and many others. The Club's archive of some four thousand French catalogues, representing most of the important sales held from the 17th century to the present day, is certainly the largest such collection outside France, and is much consulted by scholars. Electronic records for the entire bo ok auction catalogue collection are available through the Grolier Club Library Online Catalogue: for a link, see the options under Library in the menu at upper left.
06 Libraries and library science, general
07 Institutional libraries
Subarranged by country. The focus here is on catalogues (and, to a lesser extent, histories) of notable institutional libraries.
08 Private libraries
Another important focus of the Library—suitable to an organization of collectors and bibliophiles—is material documenting personal collecting and the building of private libraries. The Grolier's collection of private library catalogues is perhaps unrivalled in the United States. The collection spans nearly three centuries, and encompasses unique manuscript inventories (such as that of Madame de Pompadour's library, right), as well as printed lists of libraries great and obscure. Important examples of this genre include the 250-volume manuscript slip-catalogue of Lord Spencer's great library (complete with mahogany travelling case), as well as a full set of catalogues printed by Sir Thomas Phillipps to document his fabled Bibliotheca Phillippica. Important personages and famous bibliomanes aside, the research strength of the collection lies in its coverage of the whole range of private collecting, and particularly those many hundreds of catalogues which document a wide range of more modest libraries.
10-19 The Art of the Book
17 Book collecting
The Dibdin Collection. Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776-1847) was a gregarious and loquacious clergyman who was also a passionate collector and lover of books. He published numerous gossipy accounts of collectors and libraries in early 19th century England (a hotbed of bibliomania, or "book madness"), and although his prose is a bit ornate for modern tastes, it is a small price to pay for boundless enthusiasm and keen insight. The Library has a good collection of Dibdin's printed works—including Dibdin's own copies of Specimen Bibliothecae Brittanicae, A Bibliographical ... Tour in France and Germany, and Reminiscences of a Literary Life—as well as letters, bibliographical notes, and other material.
20-29 Writing. Palaeography. Manuscripts.
30-39 Typography. Printing
The mission of the Grolier Club is "to foster the study, collecting, and appreciation of books and works on paper," and the Library is rich in works documenting the history of printing, typography, and graphic design. Researchers and practitioners will find much of interest here, from important historical landmarks such as Geoffroy Tory's Champfleury, to 19th-century type specimen books, from Joseph Moxon's 1677 Mechanick Exercises, to catalogues of the latest digitized typefaces.
34 Specim ens of fine printing
Since 1884 the Club has played a part in the education of typographers, designers, and librarians, and to that end has built a valuable teaching collection illustrating book-making through the centuries. The collection includes a small but choice group of illuminated manuscripts, as well as representative examples of incunabula, and later works by acknowledged masters of printing and typography—Aldus, Jenson, Plantin, Baskerville, Bodoni, and a host of others. The modern fine press movement is particularly well represented, and, along with supporting secondary literature, the researcher will find many examples illustrating the work of typographers and designers, from William Morris (The Kelmscott Press Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley is illustrated at left) to Joseph Blumenthal. 
40-49 Book Illustration. Prints. Engraving.
The very first Grolier exhibition, mounted in 1884, was a survey of etchings from Dürer to Whistler, and the Club maintains to this day a lively interest in the graphic arts. The Society of Iconophiles, organized in 1894 by Grolier Club member William Loring Andrews for the purpose of producing fine prints of New York subjects, was an important focus of Club activity until the demise of the Society in 1939, and the Club retains the organization's very complete and interesting archive. The Library's own print collection, appropriately enough, is centered on images of bookish subjects and portraits of men and women notable in the book arts, as well as bookplates and other related bibliophile ephemera (such as the bookplate and portrait of Samuel Pepys, at right), each category supported by its own reference collection.
50-59 Bookbinding.
 The Club's rich collection of reference works on the art and craft of book-binding is complemented by a choice array of examples. A fitting centerpiece is the important 'Grolier binding' shown at left—one of the distinctive and beautiful 16th-century gilt bindings commissioned by the Club's namesake, Jean Grolier. Early in its history the Club maintained its own firm of binders imported from France, and there are some delightful examples in the collection of the work of the 'Club Bindery'. Aside from these highlights, the collection includes a large and representative sampling of bindings ancient and modern—focusing on the work of notable craftsmen from Roger Payne to Michael Wilcox—in all styles, and in every conceivable material, from cloth to silver.
60-69 Bookplates.
This class covers the art and history of printed and engraved bookplates, as well as other marks of ownership, such as inscriptions and armorial bindings. Included are works on the coats of arms prominent in so many forms of exlibris. In addition to reference works, the Grolier Club Library holds collections of bookplates totalling over 10,000 separate examples.
Periodicals
Includes annuals and other regularly issued serials. The Library has an extensive collection in the areas of bibliography and collecting, with a selection of library journals devoted mainly to rare books. Current subscriptions number about 200.
Manuscripts and Archives
The Library's manuscript and archival collections cover a period of over four hundred years, and contain a great deal of unique and valuable research material supporting the Club's focus on printing, bookselling, and book collecting. The Library's autograph collections include letters documenting the bookish activities of Jean Grolier, Thomas Wotton (the "English Grolier"), Jacques de Thou, Cardinal Mazarin, Thomas Jefferson, T homas Frognall Dibdin, and Guglielmo Libri. The cornerstone of the Club's archival holdings on book collecting is the Phillipps Collection (for a link, see options under Library in menu at upper left), some three thousand books, manuscripts, and letters pertaining to Sir Thomas Phillipps (pictured at right), the great nineteenth-century English bibliomaniac. The Library also holds a number of important dealer archives, including those of Édouard Rahir, Arthur Swann, E. P. Goldschmidt, and the Scribner rare book department. A recent and very interesting addition in this category is a collection of some three hundred letters of Sir Sydney Cockerell (1867-1962) to Grolier Club member Harold Peirce (d. 1932), dating from 1897-1931, and illustrating Cockerell's hitherto largely undocumented activities as a book agent and rare book dealer. A high-spot in the Club's collections of printing history is a group of three manuscript ledgers documenting the London printing firm of William Bowyer & Son from 1710 to 1773, a unique and singularly complete record of 18th-century printing practice. And finally, book designers, illustrators, and typographers are represented in archival collections of Frederic Warde, Bruce Rogers, Rudolph Ruzicka, Sidney L. Smith, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, and others. The Grolier Club Library maintains online acomplete list of its archival collections, with links to detailed finding aids: see options under Library in menu at upper left.
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