The Athenæum's collections consist of over a half a million volumes and are particularly strong in the areas of Boston history, New England state and local history, biography, English and American literature, and the fine and decorative arts. Holdings are arranged in six major divisions: 1) books on the open shelves; 2) rare material (including manuscripts and special collections; 3) fine art, prints, engravings, and photographs; 4) maps; 5) reference material; and 6) newspapers, periodicals, and microfilm.
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS From the 15th-century rarities included in the King's Chapel collection to a rich abundance of Confederate States imprints, the Athenæum's Special Collections reflect a continuing concern not only for cultivating strengths to serve the needs of library patrons, but also for preserving historically valuable books, prints, and photographs for the use of scholars and researchers and the enlightenment of future generations of readers.
Special Collections include: Confederate States imprints; 18th- and 19th-century tracts; early Boston newspapers; early United States documents; 19th-century prints and photographs; Gypsy literature; the King's Chapel Collection (mostly 17th-century historical and theological works); early American broadsides; books from the libraries of George Washington, General Henry Knox, and Jean Louis, Cardinal Cheverus; an Author's Collection featuring first editions and related works by John Fowles, Lord Byron, T.S. Eliot, and John Masefield; the Danforth Collection of chemistry and alchemy books; books published by Boston publisher Crocker and Brewster; private press collections, including a large portion of the archives of the Merrymount Press; and early publications in Native American languages.
From its early days the Athenæum was a center for the fine arts, and was Boston's first museum of fine arts. M. M. Swan writes in her book The Athenæum Gallery, 1827-1873: The Boston Athenæum as an Early Patron of Art, that "for almost fifty years following its first art gallery exhibition in 1827, the trustees purchased paintings and sculpture, European and American, and fostered the production of works of art by exhibitions." In 1873 and 1874 the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which had been incorporated in 1870, occupied two of the four Athenæum galleries, and when it moved in 1876 to its new quarters in Copley Square much of the Atheæum's art collection was deposited there to form the nucleus of the new museum. The Athenæum retained many remarkable works still to be seen in the building, however, including busts of Washington, Franklin, and Lafayette by Jean Antoine Houdon; the Mather Brown portrait of John Adams, which once belonged to Thomas Jefferson; John Singer Sargent's portrait of Annie Adams Fields; several portraits by Gilbert Stuart; the large painting of Thomas Handasyd Perkins by Thomas Sully in the first floor Reading Room; and the full length portraits of Daniel Webster and John Marshall by Chester Harding, which hang in the Athenæum's vestibule. The Athenæum still actively acquires works of art relevant to the collection, usually by gift and occasionally by purchase. Thanks to the generosity of two descendants, the Athenæum now owns the largest collection of the work of American painter Cephas Thompson, and has recently purchased works by Asher B. Durand and Chester Harding.
The Athenæum's collection of manuscripts grew steadily from the founding of the institution, but it was not until the stewardship of Librarian Charles Knowles Bolton that efforts were first made to develop and organize this material. Today the Athenæum is interested in donations of unpublished material which in some way relates to the history of the institution, its founders, and members, or manuscripts which help document the influence of the Atheæum on the literary, social, and artistic culture of Boston. Significant manuscripts already in the collection include the papers of Atheæum Trustee Samuel Eliot; the William Tudor papers; papers of Commodore Isaac Hull; papers of architects Charles Bulfinch, Alexander Parris, George Minot Dexter, Nathaniel Bradlee, John H. Sturgis, Ogden Codman, and Richard Clipston Sturgis; artists' papers (Amasa Hewins, Isaac Sprague, Cephas Thompson, Cecilia Beaux, Francesca Alexander, John Singer Sargent); and papers of merchant John Perkins Cushing, Robert Morris (African American lawyer and abolitionist), and P.T. Barnum and Moses Kimball (showmen). The records of the Provident Institution for Savings, the second savings bank to be established in the United States, came as a gift to the Athenæum in 1993. Modern additions to the collection include the papers of historian Stewart Mitchell, and the papers of long-time Boston School Committee member Joseph Lee.
The Athenæum maintains not only its own, but also the institutional archives of two earlier Boston cultural institutions, the Anthology Society and the Boston Library Society; the Boston Library Society merged with the Athenæum in 1939. The Boston Library Society records include information on early members, and catalogs and reading lists from this early Boston institution. The Anthology Society records chronicle the evolution of a small group of scholars who became the founders of the Boston Athenæum. As the founders and proprietors of the Atheæum were also the dynamic builders of Federal Boston, the Athenæum archives preserve crucial records relative to 18th- and early 19th-century literary and cultural development in the city. Taken all together, these archives provide a complete and unbroken record of Boston cultural development from 1792 until the present day.
50 Books Plus Three: Special Collections Reports (plus illustrations) from Stanley Ellis Cushing, Curator of Rare Books
Thomas Moore's The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland, 1855Pierre-Joseph Redouté's Traite des arbres et arbustes que l'on cultive en France