NEWS RELEASE
For immediate Release
December 16, 2002
Contact: Glenda Thornton
(216) 687-2475
Laura Martin (216)
687-4695
Rare and unusual Mayan books
donated to Cleveland State University Library
Cleveland State University Library has formally accepted a major collection of rare and unusual books on ancient Mayan culture, donated by Cleveland attorney and avid Mayan enthusiast, Mr. Peter Harwood. This unique collection consists of more than 650 seminal works along with nearly 200 unpublished scholarly papers concentrating on Mayan art, archaeology, culture, language, and writing.
Phil Wanyerka of
Cleveland State University's Anthropology department and a scholar of Ancient
Maya writing evaluated the collection for its potential as a research and teaching
resource. He says "The Harwood
Collection is unusual in that the majority of this collection consists of rare
and extremely hard-to-find titles focusing on the early history and
decipherment of Mayan hieroglyphic writing." Of special interest are the 108 books that will become the focal
point for a new Mayan archive that will be housed within the Special
Collections Room of the main library.
This new Mayan archive will feature the rarest books of the Harwood Collection. Titles to be housed within this new special
collection archive include John Lloyd Stephen’s 1843 (1st Edition)
of Incidents of Travel in Yucatan;
Désiré Charnay’s 1888 (1st Edition) of The Ancient Cities of the New World; Juan Pio Perez’s 1877 (1st
Edition) of Diccionario De La Lengua Maya;
Nuttall’s 1903 (1st Edition) of The
Book of the Life of the Ancient Mexicans; and Cyrus Thomas 1894 (1st
Edition) of The Maya Year. In addition, to
these rare works, the Harwood Collection also includes many lavishly
illustrated and rare oversized volumes like Baird’s The Drawings of Sahagún’s Primeros Memoriales; Proskouriakoff’s
1946 (1st Edition) of An Album
of Maya Architecture; Barrera Vásquez’s Diccionario
Maya Cordemex; Maler’s Explorations
of the Upper Usumacinta and Adjacent Region; and Morley’s Inscriptions of the Peten to name just a
few. Also included in the Harwood
Collection are several extremely rare boxed-set facsimile editions of Maya and
Aztec codices including the Codex
Dresdensis, the Codex Chimpopeca,
Codex Peresianus, and the Codex Vindobonensis.
For more information contact Dr. Glenda Thornton, Cleveland State University Library, at (216) 687-2475.