The Huntington is one of America’s premier cultural, research, and educational centers, with holdings that are among the most treasured artifacts of Western civilization. Its most famous treasures include a lavishly decorated fifteenth-century manuscript of Chaucer’s "Canterbury Tales," one of only eleven known vellum copies of the Gutenberg Bible, Benjamin Franklin’s handwritten autobiography, a rare double-elephant folio of Audubon’s "Birds of America," and George Washington’s own survey of Mount Vernon. The collections comprise more than five million rare books, manuscripts, photographs, maps, prints, and ephemera, with extraordinary resources for the study of British and American history and literature, the history of science, and the history of printing. "The Huntington Library: Treasures from Ten Centuries" opens the doors of what is known as a scholar’s paradise, exploring the value of these holdings in history and for the present. Railroad and real estate developer Henry E. Huntington accumulated his world-class collections at a blistering pace early in the 20th century. In his introduction, Library Director David Zeidberg explains the unprecedented strategies Huntington used to acquire these extraordinary materials. In the following chapters, the curators present highlights from the collections of illuminated manuscripts, cartography, early printed books (those before 1500), paleography (the study of ancient handwriting), history of science, photography, American literature, and the California Gold Rush. This volume will appeal to those who want to know more about the Huntington Library as well as anyone interested in Anglo-American cultural history.