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, ...

's Fales Library and Special Collections is located on the third floor of the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library 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, boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the List of co ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

. 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 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 sequel ...

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, E. L. Doctorow 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 Wor ...

. 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, Richard Foreman and Lynne Tillman 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 and the Gonightclubbing 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 * Jerome Charyn * Dennis Cooper * E. L. Doctorow * 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 ...

* Peter Straub * Lynne Tillman *

David Wojnarowicz David Michael Wojnarowicz ( (September 14, 1954 – July 22, 1992) was an American painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist, and AIDS activist prominent in the East Village art scene. He incorp ...

* Kathleen Hanna *

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