My Love for Rare Books and fine Bindings Die Jantz-Sammlung der Duke University Libraries

Though in the natural course of events a large number of the famous works were added, I preferred to acquire the unknown and unusual of promise, feeling that I could content myself with the modern critical editions of the well known books. [...]there are many books, pamphlets, broadsides in the collection about which all the handbooks on the period are silent, but which nevertheless have their contributions to make to our understanding of the Baroque.17 Doch es sind nicht nur die kaum erhältlichen und zu teuren Werke von Autoren wie Simon Dach, Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen oder Paul Gerhardt, die Jantz nicht mehr kaufen konnte, vielmehr lag seinen Erwerbungen auch ein weiter Literaturbegriff zugrunde, der neben dem "what we now call literature, schöne Literatur, belles letters, and other writings"18 auch religiöse, historische, didaktische und wissenschaftliche Literatur mit einbezog. Literatur und Kultur und vice versa geht Jantz hinaus, wenn er zu seinen Amerikana auch solche zählt wie the works written by Germans living in America; the works of Americans living in Germany (this group possibly a surprise to some, but truly extant, though sparsely since the seventeenth century); the German works brought over during the Colonial and Early Federal periods, often by Anglo-American immigrants; the German books printed in America either in German or in English translation; the American books printed in the German lands, in German since the seven- teenth century, at times later on in English; the works of the German sojourners and travellers in America; the works of the American sojourners and travellers in Germany; the books of the few who pendulated between the two. First Images of America.