Museum accessions.(Benjamin Franklin's works Library Company of Philadelphia )

Benjamin Franklin's brainchild for providing eighteenth-century Philadelphians with access to books, the Library Company of Philadelphia today houses a vast and fascinating collection of printed volumes, manuscripts, and graphic, fine, and decorative arts. Its history and holdings, which are explored on pages 56-121 of this issue, document American history and culture from the colonial period to the end of the nineteenth century. But the Library Company is not a dusty, stagnant repository for old books and images, it is a vibrant place that continues to acquire important objects, as those on this page demonstrate.

One of the most appropriate is a copy of Houres of Recreation, or Afterdinners, which may aptly be called The Garden of Pleasure (see below), which belonged to Franklin himself and from which he culled a number of the aphorisms included in his Poor Richard almanacs. It came to the Library Company just as work was being completed on the task of reconstructing Franklin's personal library, and in time to play an important role in the exhibition Benjamin Franklin, Writer and Printer, on view at the Library Company through December 22 (and at the Grolier Club in New York City from December 12, 2007, through February 2, 2008). In the book that accompanies the exhibition, James Green, the Library Company librarian, writes at length about Franklin's use of this and other works in his writing, revealing how Poor Richard is an extraordinarily intricate construction of bits and pieces of other books, which themselves were often composed of assorted fragments from both oral and literary culture.

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The Philadelphia native Rembrandt Peale was one of the first American artists to experiment with the art of ...