Paul Chrzanowski Collection
In fall 2009 Paul Chrzanowski donated his collection of seventy-two early English books to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Nine additional titles followed in 2014 and these gracious donations have continued to this day, now reaching over 120 rare early English books.
The Paul Chrzanowski Collection is the most valuable and important donation made to the Clark since the original donation of the founder’s collection, deeded in 1926 and transferred to UCLA’s custody in 1934. A physicist and collector in California, Paul Chrzanowski set out twenty-five years ago to acquire texts that Shakespeare likely read or could have read in some form. Some are identified as source books that Shakespeare used to write his plays; many are not but remain important to the development of the English language and literature as well as societal changes in the English Tudor period in which Shakespeare lived.
Among its highlights are a 1479 edition by England’s first printer, William Caxton; two Shakespeare folios; and a rare quarto of Henry VI, the first Shakespeare quarto added to the Clark since the founder’s original gift. The collection also includes works by Chaucer, Gower, Spenser, Marlowe, Jonson, and other major authors, along with early English Bibles, chronicles, and translations of classical writers such as Plutarch and Ariosto. Several volumes carry distinguished provenance, having once belonged to figures including William Randolph Hearst, Sir John Barrymore, John Wilkes, and John Lockwood Kipling.
Dr. Chrzanowski’s own research on his collection, including his notes on provenance, textual variants, and patterns of reading, has become a valuable resource in itself. His scholarship provides essential context for understanding the intellectual networks and reading culture that shaped early modern England. Together, his books and commentary form a living research collection that continues to grow, to inform scholarship, and to deepen our understanding of the world that inspired Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The Clark Library is deeply grateful to Paul Chrzanowski for his generous gift.
New titles will be added as they are received. A chronological title list of the collection appears below.