East Asian Library and Gest Collection Princeton University

The East Asian Library and the Gest Collection (pronounced "Guest") in the Princeton University Library is the university's principle collection of materials in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages, as well as works on Chinese, Japanese and Korean linguistics and literatures in Western languages.

The Gest Oriental Library is named in honor of Guion Moore Gest (1864-1948), whose collection of Chinese books and manuscripts formed the Gest Chinese Research Library. The Gest Research Library was officially opened on February 13 (Chinese New Year's Day), 1926, at McGill University in Toronto. It was renamed the Gest Oriental Library when the collection was moved to Princeton in 1937. The library's holdings were expanded into Japanese and Korean after World War II to form one of the largest collections in North America. The Chinese collection is especially strong in Ming dynasty editions and works on traditional Chinese medicine.

Guion Moore Gest built one of the largest collections of Chinese language rare books in North America in spite of the fact that he was not especially wealthy and could not read Chinese. Hu Shi, a prominent scholar who served as curator 1950-1952, noted that the collection, which "began as a hobby and developed into an investment, soon became a burden to a founder".

Gest travelled often to Asia in the 1910s and 1920s on business for the Gest Engineering Company, which he founded and headed. As early as the 1890s he develolped an interes in Buddhism and bought a Japanese manuscript scroll. He retained Chen Baozhen, a Chinese scholar who had been an imperial tutor, to locate and purchase books for his collection. Chen assembled more than 8,000 volumes, (juan?) mostly standard works.

After Chen's death in 1900, Gest retained an agent in Beijing, Commander I.V. Gillis (1875-1948), a retired United States Naval Attaché. He spoke Mandarin Chinese fluently, but could not read classical Chinese texts that had not been punctuated. He developed intimate knowledge through many years of handling books, however, and a leading Chinese bibliographer who examined his collection and his catalogues wrote that "his knowledge of Chinese bibliography is exceptionally good". Gillis' wife was a Manchu princess, and his web of personal relations led him to the Guangxu emperor's tutor and other high officials with collections of useful volumes. Gest suffered from glaucoma, and Gillis suggested that he try an eye medicine which was a specialty the Ma family of Dingxian, Hebei province, who kept a shop in the capital. This medicine sparked Gest's interest in traditional Chinese medicine and in collecting books on the subject.

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