The Robert Dechert Collection includes over 1600 printed books focusing on American travel, exploration, and Native American relations with settlers. Materials date from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. French Americana and the writings of Las Casas are particular strengths of the collection. A Dechert fund supports ongoing acquisitions.
From 1583 to 1712, the Dutch firm of Elzevier (sometimes written Elsevier or Elzevir), with additional offices in France and Scandinavia, published a wide variety of books, and notably small-format books, for circulation throughout Europe. Penn's collection of Elzevier imprints, a donation of E. B. Krumbhaar to which subsequent purchases have been added, comprises over 1600 volumes produced by the Elzevier firm, along with related publications.
The Kislak Center holds over 560 exemplars of books printed in Europe from movable type before 1501. Sixty-six of these titles are the only recorded copies in North America. These volumes contain texts in religion, philosophy, and ancient and modern literature. This collection group includes includes incunables from the Henry Charles Lea Library and the Yarnall Library of Theology.
The Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection includes nearly three hundred manuscripts and documents ranging in date from ca. 1900BC to the 20th century, with particular focus on the eras of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
The Lorraine Beitler Collection of the Dreyfus Affair comprises over 1,000 items documenting the history of the Dreyfus Affair and its impact on the art, society, and politics of France and the modern world.
A major collection of printed documents from the era of the French Revolution, the Maclure Collection comprises approximately 25,000 pamphlets and periodicals published in France from the late 1780s to ca. 1815. These sources provide in-depth documentation of political, economic, legal debates, and the socio-cultural struggles, during the tumultuous years of the Revolution.