Many of the owners’ marks traced in Footprints are of as-yet unknown people.  I don’t know, for instance, who “Hayyim ben Tsevi Hirsch” is, nor “Yaakov Tsevi ben Dovid Yoel,” but there might be a scholar doing research on either individual on the other side of the country who can positively identify him, or perhaps an additional owner for books owned by him!  This is exactly what happened with a book in the Columbia University Libraries.

Columbia’s printed Judaica collection is composed of many different books, each with their own story to tell.  Unfortunately, as of about year years ago, only about 1/3 of the printed Judaica were actually in the online catalog.  To rectify this, the Judaica librarian hired Hannah Vaitsblit, a Barnard student who has been carefully checking every Judaica book in the rare stacks to make sure that they are cataloged and thus accessible and known to any potential users.  One of the things that Hannah excelled at was marking instances of provenance, that is, notes indicating ownership of the book throughout its existence.  One of the books that Hannah found was a Latin copy of Josephus’s De Bello Judaica (Wars of the Jews), printed in Cologne in 1559.  Hannah indicated the presence of the bookplate shown here, noting the  “Philosophemur” shield as well as the Case information below it as she entered the record for the book into CLIO.

The record was discovered by Newton scholar Professor Stephen Snobelen, who contacted Columbia asking for more information about the book.  He asked us if there was an indicator of “A3-21,” which was the classmark for this book in the Musgrave library (one of the libraries that owned Newton’s books).

A note on Professor Snobelen’s depth of research: Hannah had originally transcribed the last word in the text on the bottom of the plate as “Barusleer.”  Since Prof. Snobelen is well versed in the travels of Newton’s library (described further below), he asked if it was possible that the text read “Barnsley.”  A careful viewer can see that either reading is possible, but we know now that it was the latter.

After Isaac Newton’s death, John Huggins, his neighbor, purchased the library for £300.  (His bookplate can be seen peeking out underneath the “Philosophemur” plate.)  The collection went from Huggins to his son Charles, and from Charles Huggins to James Musgrave, whose bookplate is seen above, with the family motto, “Philosophemur.” The library remained in the Musgrave family for generations, moving with them in 1778 to Barnsley Park, Gloucestershire, where the new classmarks were added in ink (on the bottom of the plate).  The library was partially sold at auction in 1920, when it is likely that this book entered the market, ultimately ending up at Columbia in 1922.  You can see all of the Footprints for the Josephus here.

Other books from Newton’s library have been found at the Huntington Library (Mede’s Works), at the King’s College Library (interestingly, a Hebrew lexicon), at the University of Michigan‘s library, and at Cardiff University.

(Cross-posted with minor changes from the Jewish Studies @CUL blog)