The most valuable Czech manuscript in the custody of the Manuscript Division is Thomas G. Masaryk's complete original handwritten copy of his book Nová Evropa (The New Europe). The final version of this work was written by Masaryk during his stay in Washington in 1918, and the manuscript was donated to the Library by Masaryk's former private secretary, Dr. Jaroslav Císař.
More than 20 documents (letters, memoranda, statements) relating to Masaryk's liberation movement during World War I can be found in the collection of the Woodrow Wilson Papers. They include the "Declaration of Common Aims," issued by the Mid-European Democratic Union, an organization of representatives of the Central European peoples, in October 1918.
Documents on the situation in Czechoslovakia after World War II are included in the collection of Papers of Laurence A. Steinhardt, U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1945 to 1948.
Of great interest for the study of the history of the city of Prague is the collection of Papers of Antonín Novotný (1891-1978), a Czech author specializing in the history of the capital of Bohemia.
The Manuscript Division seeks to preserve personal papers and organizational records that document the course of America's national experience. Its more than twelve thousand collections and more than seventy million items touch upon every aspect of American history and culture. The Manuscript Division's holdings are strongest, however, in the areas of American national government, the federal judiciary, diplomacy, military history, women's history, and black history.
