Confederate States Imprints
The Athenæum holds one of the largest collections of Confederate States imprints in the United States. This collection of over 5,000 items includes official publications of the Confederate States, military documents, belles-lettres, sheet music, religious tracts, charitable and fraternal publications, almanacs, newspapers, and periodicals. Most of the Confederate material is also on microfilm. A detailed account of the history and growth of this collection is found in Marjorie Lyle Crandall's Confederate State Imprints (The Boston Athenæum, 1955). The Athenæum began to collect Confederate imprints in 1865, under the supervision of Francis Parkman, a member of the Library Committee. His instincts as a historian led him to see the need for preserving the products of the Confederate press, and he embarked on a journey through the South, buying as rapidly and astutely as he could. The fine collection in the Athenæum today is due in large measure to Francis Parkman's efforts. Among Parkman's initial purchases was the entire file of the Richmond Daily Examiner, covering the period from February 1861 to the evacuation of the city by Confederate authorities in 1865. Encouraged by the Athenæum's Librarian, William F. Poole, and by friends and contacts he was making throughout the South, Parkman's efforts saved an enormous number of priceless publications from permanent loss. The Confederate collection is heavily used today, and original publications and related material are added whenever possible.18th- and 19th-Century Tracts
In the Athenæum's collection are over 30,000 18th- and 19th-century tracts, pamphlets dealing with controversial religious, historical, and scientific issues. They form an invaluable source of information about every aspect of American history, politics, religion, and culture from that period.Boston Newspapers
The Athenæum's collection of early Boston newspapers is particularly strong in 19th-century publications, such as the Boston Daily Advertiser (1821-1902), the Boston Daily Atlas (1832-1861), the Saturday Evening Gazette (1822-1876), the Boston Journal (1865-1903), the Liberator (1831-1865), the Boston Post (1831-1895), the Boston Daily Times (1836-1857), and the Boston Evening Transcript (1830-1941). While much of this collection is contained in bound volumes, the participation of the Athenæum in the Massachusetts Newspaper Program (coordinated by the Boston Public Library) has meant that an increasing number of newspaper titles are now preserved on microfilm.Early U.S. Government Documents
The Athenæum holds a good collection of printed American documents, based in part upon the collections of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, which were gifts to the library. Of special importance is the material from the first fourteen congresses.The Gypsy Collection
In 1901 the Athenæum acquired over 300 printed books, manuscripts and notebooks belonging to Francis Hindes Groome, an eminent scholar of Gypsy life and culture. The holdings include bilingual Romany language dictionaries in Finnish, Hungarian, and other languages, and translations of some parts of the Bible into Romany. There are also Groome's own books with his marginal notations, over thirty volumes of manuscript notes and lectures, and his correspondence with Paul Bataillard, the French student of Gypsy life. The Athenæum has attempted to add regularly to this unusual collection, and today subscribes to numerous domestic and international newspapers, journals and magazines dealing with Gypsy scholarship, history, culture, and literature.The King's Chapel Collection
The books in the King's Chapel Collection were originally given to the ministers of King's Chapel, Boston, by William and Mary, and arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the spring of 1698. The collection consisted of 92 folios, 18 quartos, and 90 smaller works, and included Brian Walton's Biblia Polyglotta, lexicons and Biblical commentaries, editions of the Church Fathers, sermons and ecclesiastical works, and histories (including the 1666 edition of Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World). The library was the only collection of books in New England at the time (excluding the Harvard College Library) not of private ownership. Many of the bindings are original and some are stamped with William's name and the words "Belonging to the library of Boston in New England." In 1807 the books in the library were deposited with the Theological Library in Boston; however, in 1823 the proprietors of that institution voted to transfer them to the Boston Athenæum for safekeeping. In 1911 the Trustees of King's Chapel made a formal and permanent gift of the books to the Athenæum. The collection has been housed since 1883 in a special case on the third floor decorated with the portraits of William and Mary. Today it is one of the largest of the colonial libraries still in existence.Broadsides
The broadside collection, consisting of over 3,000 single-sheet printed items ranging in date from the late 1660s to the mid-1960s (the bulk falling around 1865), contains examples of British and American broadside verse, official proclamations, theater handbills, political election notices, and commercial advertising. These materials, now represented in a printed inventory, are closely related to the Athenæum collections of books, manuscripts, prints, and photographs in the field of local history, and, like many of the library's other special collections, are important for documenting the vigor and variety of cultural life in Boston in the 19th century.The Washington Collection
The books collected by George Washington during his lifetime were kept at his former home at Mt. Vernon until about 1848, at which time a large portion of them were sold to Henry Stevens, American agent of the British Museum. A group of Bostonians who were determined to keep these books in the United States solicited subscriptions to acquire the collection from Mr. Stevens. After the acquisition of the collection the group placed it permanently in the care of the Athenæum. The subscribers also bought from S.G. Drake a number of books and pamphlets relating to Washington. Many of the books obtained from Henry Stevens contain Washington's signature, some his manuscript notes and bookplate. Topics within the collection range from animal husbandry to military strategy, carpentry, poetry and civil liberty. The bindings are for the most part in good condition, and many are original.General Henry Knox
General Henry Knox , member of the Anthology Society, in 1806, the year before that society founded the Athenæum, was a volunteer in Washington's army, rising from colonel to Chief of Artillery to general. He brought the cannons from Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York to lift the British siege of Boston. After the war and service as Secretary of War in Washington's cabinet, he retired to Maine. His library of about 600 volumes was purchased for the Athenæum by William Smith Shaw in 1809.Right Reverend Jean Louis, Cardinal Cheverus (1768-1836)
Right Reverend Jean Louis, Cardinal Cheverus, first Roman Catholic Bishop of Boston, was a French aristocrat whose learning and piety greatly impressed Boston citizens, Protestant and Catholic alike. A refugee from the French Revolution, he resided in Boston between 1810 and 1823; upon his return to France he became Archbishop of Bordeaux and later Cardinal. While in residence in Boston he donated 75 volumes of his personal library to the Athenæum.Author Collections
In 1885-86 the Athenæum purchased from New York bookseller J.W. Bouton over 300 works by and about the British poet George Gordon, Lord Byron. As such, these volumes represent one of the earliest author collections developed by an American library. The collection, consisting of numerous first editions and foreign printings of Byron's works, spurious editions, biographies, and Byroniana, has been reorganized and will be the subject of a forthcoming bibliography. A collection of the first, limited, and signed editions of the work of British poet laureate John Masefield was presented to the Athenæum by a generous donor, and has been augmented by the purchase of appropriate source material. The T.S. Eliot Collection had its origin in an important group of 212 items presented to the library in 1957 by Dr. James B. Smith. The core collection was greatly enhanced in 1993 by the legacy of Eliot's cousins, the Misses Aimée and Rosamond Lamb. The collection is formed from Eliot's inscribed first editions, translations, and minor contributions to periodicals. Of particular interest is a group of approximately fifty unpublished letters and cards to the Misses Lamb from Eliot and his second wife, Valerie. The Athenæum also has a growing collection of first editions and author's proofs of the British novelist John Fowles.Fine Printing and the Book Arts
The Athenæum has an especially strong collection of private press imprints. Most noteworthy among these is the collection of Merrymount Press publications and a representative collection of the press's working archives. The Athenæum also has extensive holdings of works on binding, printing and book illustration.Native American Language and Literature
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864), American explorer and ethnologist, was an avid student of American Indian languages, history, and folklore, and in 1871 the Athenæum was fortunate to receive from his widow, Mary Howard Schoolcraft, a gift of 164 volumes from his library. These rare works include early spelling books, primers, Bibles, dictionaries, compilations of tribal laws, and temperance tracts in many North American languages including Choctaw, Cherokee, Mohawk, and Cree. Also in the library is a unique manuscript vocabulary of the language used by the Salinan tribe, who were a Hokan-speaking people originally from the central coast of California. This vocabulary was copied down by three Franciscan priests who lived at the San Antonio mission in California between 1770 and 1798.