From the Library of RBF

Over two hundred volumes from Fuller's working library are detailed here. Most were sent to him inscribed by friends and colleagues, or acquired, read, annotated, and inscribed at later meetings. Many bear his signature and his typed spine labels — "architecture," "literature," "philosophy," "city planning" — though many works are interdisciplinary, as was his life. The intimate presentations include praise from architects, city planners, anthropologists, futurists, environmentalists, artists, and designers worldwide, evincing Fuller's own cross-disciplinary impact.

Core structure

• A NOTE
• A.E. The National Being: Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity. New York: Macmillan, 1916.
• Adler, Alfred. Understanding Human Nature. Translated by Walter Beran Wolfe. Garden City: Garden City Publishing Co., (1927).
• (Agassiz, Louis) Davenport, Guy. The Intelligence of Louis Agassiz. Boston: Beacon Press, (1963).
• (Albers, Anni) On Designing. (New Haven, CT: The Pellango Press, 1959.)
• (Albers, Anni) Anni Albers. By Gene Baro, with an essay by Nicholas Fox Weber. (The Brooklyn Museum, 1977.)

Main ideas

• Over two hundred volumes from Fuller's working library are detailed page by page.
• Each entry records condition and provenance (e.g., "8vo.; light stains to endpapers; light foxing to preliminaries; cloth; wear to extremities; library label on spine").
• The collection includes first editions such as Adler's most lasting contribution to psychology, derived from his Viennese adult-education lectures.
• A first edition of Davenport's study of Agassiz (1807–1873), founder of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, is among the holdings.
• Many entries describe illustrations, bindings, dust-jackets, and physical wear in bibliographic detail.

Why it matters

The catalog documents Fuller's intellectual milieu through the books he kept, annotated, and labeled. The entry on Guy Davenport's study of Louis Agassiz is representative: Davenport — essayist (The Geography of the Imagination, 1981; Every Force Evolves a Form, 1987), critic, artist, and translator of Heraclitus, Diogenes, Anacreon, and Sappho — received the MacArthur "genius" award in 1990. Such entries map the cross-disciplinary correspondence and esteem that surrounded Fuller's life and work.

Sources

• from_the_library_of_rbf/ — book project directory (repo-local source tree)
• from_the_library_of_rbf/index.md — catalog index of the library volumes