B is for Baldwin

The Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature, part of Special and Area Studies in the Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida, is one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of children’s books in the world. This lushly illustrated volume offers a glimpse into rarities and wonders of the Baldwin. The volumes entries explore important children’s books as well as the field of children’s literature.

With over 120,000 volumes, the Baldwin Library holds more than a lifetime of reading. The Baldwin Library is a rich resource for significant discoveries about children’s literary and material culture. Over the years, Curators have found a remarkable array of objects inside the books, from locks of hair to letters to baseball cards. Many of the books have wonderful inscriptions within the main text. The Baldwin Library includes multiple editions of the same text making possible comparisons among editions, as with 300 editions of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. The Baldwin Library’s size and scope make it a valuable research repository that affords opportunities for examining individual texts and for studying a large and evolving corpus across time. The Baldwin Library has enabled much exciting scholarship. This volume shares wonders and wondrous stories from the Baldwin Library, narrated by scholars from a diversity of fields. Exploring this volume, readers will learn about the Baldwin Library and the evolution of children’s literature.