Multnomah County Library Special Collections

Central Library's John Wilson Special Collections houses the rare book and other special collections of Multnomah County Library in Portland, Oregon. Supported by gifts to The Library Foundation, a local nonprofit dedicated to our library's leadership, innovation and reach through private support.

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For Fairytale Friday, an illustration by Edmund Dulac for the Serbian tale Bashtchelik (or, Real Steel). Included in Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book: Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations, published in 1916.

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This printer's mark is from the last page of our copy of Idylls of Theocritus, printed in Venice in 1543.

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For #fairytalefriday, an illustration by Margaret Tarrant from The Water-babies: a Fairy Tale for a Land Baby published in 1908.

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For Fairytale Friday, illustrations by Theodore Nadejen for the story The Snake-Tsarevna. Included in Skazki: Tales and Legends of Old Russia by Ida Zeitlin, published in 1926.

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Freshly catalogued, a first edition of Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well by Maya Angelo, signed with Joy! by the poet to photographer Andrée Abecassis. Gifted to our collection in 2024.

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The opening page of our copy of Commentaries by Antonio da Butrio on the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX, a manuscript on paper from around 1440, with faces looking backwards.

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For Fairy Tale Friday, this luminous illustration by Virginia Frances Sterrett from the 1921 Penn Publishing edition of Tanglewood Tales.

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A thoughtful shaped poem by William Burford, hand printed at West Chester University's Aralia Press. Gifted to our collection in 2022.

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Tomorrow (November 20, 2025) the Rick Bartow: Storyteller exhibition opens at Portland Art Museum. Bartow was a was a member of the Mad River Band of the Wiyot, an indigenous people of California. Here in Multnomah County Library special collections we are lucky to hold one of Bartow's last works, Bosch, his tribute to the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. This print is called 'My Crown,' printed on handmade paper in South Beach, Oregon in 2016.

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This small engraved portrait of the priest and healer Giovanni Antonio Rubbi is bound at the front of our copy of Piranesi's Le Antichità Romane, volume one. There's also a handmade map of Lausanne, Switzerland - who bound them there, and why, remains unknown.

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Happy Caturday! It's not easy to illustrate a transparent cat, but John R. Neill did it in his rendering of the Glass Cat. From our copy of the 1913 edition of The Patchwork Girl of Oz, with publishers' binding.

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For #fairytalefriday, Arthur Rackham's wonderful illustrations for The Wooing of Becfola from our 1920 edition of Irish Fairy Tales.

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This broadside was published by the Minnesota Center for Book Arts in 1989. Along with the text from Lord of the Dawn by Rudolfo Anaya is a wood engraving by Fred Brian. Gifted to our collection in 2022.

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From our copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, illustrated by Salvador Dalí in 1969. Signed title page, 'The Queen’s Croquet Ground' and 'Alice’s Evidence.'

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For marbled Monday, endpapers from the wee Turcici imperii status, published in 1634.

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In honor of the recent opening of the remodeled and expanded Albina Library, this winsome 'faux Baedeker,' Albina and Its Environs, handmade in 1930.

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Le Rosier a mille épines (rose bush with a thousand thorns) from Les Roses by Pierre-Joseph Redouté. Stipple engraved and colored 'à la poupée,' no reproduction or photograph can hold a candle to the original print.