Brown University Library Collections
Printing and Publishing History Collections
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Annmary Brown Memorial
In 1948, Brown University assumed ownership of the Annmary Brown Memorial. The Memorial, built by Civil War General Rush C. Hawkins and named in honor of his wife, contained an internationally known incunabula collection as well as old master paintings and drawings, Revolutionary and Civil War manuscripts and documents, plus the personal correspondence of its founder. These incunabula along with others in Special Collections make up one of the largest collections of 15th-century printed books owned by an American university. In addition to incunables, the collection contains sizeable manuscript holdings relating to the American Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and to the 17th-century New England witchcraft phenomenon. There are also some medieval manuscript books and documents, including papal letters. The books and manuscripts are now kept in the John Hay Library.
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Annmary Brown Memorial Library
The Annmary Brown Memorial, at 21 Brown Street in Providence, RI, was built in 1907 by Rush C. Hawkins (1831-1920) as a memorial to his deceased wife Annmary Brown Hawkins (1837-1903). The Memorial was designed as a tomb for the couple (both are interred there), and as a private library to house the Hawkins' collection of incunabula, paintings, manuscripts, books authored by or written about individuals with the surname of Hawkins, travel books, bibliographies, biographies, standard histories, books on printing wood engravings, and volumes on the early history of printing. This collection contains the records about the construction and maintenance of the building, documentation about the books and paintings collected by Hawkins, and records about the operation of the Memorial. It also includes a volume of minutes for the New York Dispensary for the Diseases of the Throat and Chest for which Rush Hawkins was a Trustee. Researchers can also find documentation about the Civil War swords presented to Rush Hawkins which were stolen from the Memorial and later recovered
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Audubon's Birds of America
The double elephant folio edition of Audubon's The Birds of America was published between 1827 and 1838. Subscribers received 87 parts of 5 prints each (one large, one medium and three small prints). The series contains 435 hand colored plates of 1065 birds. "Double elephant" refers to the size of the sheet of paper, which is the largest size that can be made by hand. Each sheet measures more than two by three feet.
There were 308 original subscribers, who paid approximately 00 for a complete set. While there were 308 original subscribers, only 161 subscribers purchased all parts. It is not possible to locate all of the complete sets. Some have been broken up and sold as individual images.
Albert E. Lownes, Class of 1920, presented his copy (bound in six volumes) to the University on the occasion of his 50th Class Reunion in 1970. Mr. Lownes received his copy as a wedding gift.
In addition, to the Double Elephant Folio edition, the library owns several uncolored proofs and an original printing plate, as well as other published editions of Audubon's work.
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Bayberry Hill Press
Bayberry Hill Press was a small publishing company in Connecticut that produced a series of hand-crafted books between 1958 and 1979. This collection is made up of general material about the press and material about specific books, including correspondence, manuscripts, galley proofs, paste-ups, and notebooks.
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Broadsides
The Broadsides Collection houses broadsides (single-sheet imprints), posters, bookplates, prints, valentines, greeting cards, postcards, and photographs. From a nucleus of 8,000 pieces in 1928, holdings have increased to over 40,000 items. Largely ephemeral by nature, broadsides are collected by only a few major libraries and historical societies in the United States. Originally issued primarily by governmental, religious, and political bodies, broadsides were later used for advertisements, programs, notices, ballad verses, elegies, and comments on contemporary events. More recently, they have become popular as exemplars of fine printing.
Includes holdings of the Harris, Rider, Lincoln, Koopman, Military and general library collections. Notable areas within Harris include slip ballads and carriers' addresses.
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Burning Deck
Burning Deck is the small press operated by Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop. Since 1961 it has published limited editions of the works of contemporary poets and fiction writers. The archive of Burning Deck consists of financial records, correspondence with contributors, galleys, typescripts, and art work representing forty years of literary publication. The Library also holds a complete collection of Burning Deck imprints, mostly in the Harris Collection.
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Cohen (Louis)
The Louis Cohen papers contain correspondence with salesmen and sales managers during his employment as a sales representative with Optimum Book Marketing and St. Martin’s Press/Holtzbrinck Publishers. There are also memoranda, notes, brochures, advertisements, reviews, invitations, stationery, photographs and 2 audiocassette tapes relating to his work and to his association with the Brotherhood of Book Travelers, later the Association of Book Travelers.
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Commission on Freedom of the Press Documents and Reports
Funded by grants from Time, Inc., and Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., the Commission on Freedom of the Press was established in 1943 to to determine if freedom of the press was in danger in the United States. The commission was also referred to as the Hutchins Commission. Commission members included Robert Hutchins, chairman; Zechariah Chaffee, vice-chairman; John M. Clark; John Dickinson; William E. Hocking; Harold Lasswell; Archibald MacLeish; Charles Merriam; Reinhold Niebuhr; Robert Redfield; Beardsley Ruml; Arthur Schlesinger; and George N. Schuster. The general report of the Commission, A Free and Responsible Press, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1947. This collection was donated to Brown University by Zechariah Chafee, class of 1907, and consists of documents and reports issued by the New York Office for circulation among the members of the Commission.
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Crosby (Harry)
Harry Crosby (born 1898) was an American poet and publisher also known as Henry Sturgis Crosby or Henry Grew Crosby. An American expatriate in Paris in the 1920s, his work expresses his disapproval of Puritan hypocrisy and his fascination for the cult of the sun. His Black Sun Press published special editions of James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and other contemporaries. Crosby committed suicide in New York on 10 December 1929.The collection includes 19 letters to Constance Atherton, Comtesse de Jumilhac; letters from Atherton and related correspondence; two notebooks with letter and unpublished aphorisms addressed to Atherton; book belonging to Harry and Caresse Crosby; ten manuscript notebooks; page proofs (bound) for Shadows of the Sun and for Chariot of the Sun; other writings; two albums of photographs; and Caresse Crosby's correspondence with several writers/editors/publishers. The collection also includes Crosby's last will and testament; typescript (carbon) of his The De Geetere Maldoror; and a biographical sketch of him written by his wife, Caresse Crosby.
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Dealers' Catalogs
Back files of antiquarian book dealers' catalogs, organized by dealer. Not cataloged or listed. ...more information
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December Press
Curtis L. Johnson (1928-2008) oversaw December Press, a literary press in Chicago, from 1962 until his death in 2008. The press published December, A Magazine of Arts and Opinion and several novels. This collection includes correspondence with authors, manuscripts, and financial records relating to the activities of the magazine and the press.
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Dirt Palace ephemera
This collection consists of the ephemera of Dirt Palace a feminist artist-run non-profit arts space and artist collective located in Providence, Rhode Island. The collection includes articles, zines, posters, pamphlets, and newsletters related to the activities of Dirt Palace’s space and affiliated artists. The collection spans from 2011 to 2018.
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Eichenberg (Fritz)
Engravings (25 total) acquired from the estate of book illustrator and graphic artist Fritz Eichenberg, who is primarily known for his work in wood engraving.
The copyright and literary rights to the works of Fritz Eichenberg reside in the Fritz Eichenberg Trust. Permission to publish must be obtained from the trustees. Requests should be directed to the Trustees of the Fritz Eichenberg Trust, c/o VAGA, 111 Broadway, Suite 1006, New York, NY 10006, (212)736-6666 - info@vagarights.com. ...more information
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Feminist Press
The Feminist Press was founded in 1970 by Florence Howe as an independent nonprofit literary publisher of feminist literature. The records include correspondence relating to books published and in progress; in-house reports, memos, and other items; book manuscripts and proofs, files dealing with the production of books, permissions, and domestic and international projects; general subject files; correspondence etc. about rejected manuscripts; and documentation of the founding (1971) and history of the press, including minutes and reports. Editorial files for authors published by the press include, among others, those for Alice Cook, Elizabeth Janeway, Meridel Le Sueur, Paule Marshall, Louise Meriwether, Naomi Mitchinson, Robin Morgan, Toni Morrison, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Jo Sinclair, Alice Walker, and Dorothy West. There are also contracts with authors; royalty statements and related papers; fundraising records; files dealing with marketing, customer service, and foreign rights; proposals and rejections for new books; and general administrative, business, and financial records. In addition there are printed catalogs and publicity items; reprints; book design and examples of covers and dust jackets; and tapes, slides, photographs, and miscellaneous printed items. Filed separately are records of Women's studies quarterly from its beginning in 1972.
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Frost (Edwin Collins) and William Henry Frost
This collection, dating from 1890 to 1941, consists of letters addressed to both Edwin Collins Frost (1867-1956) and William Henry Frost (1863-1902) and a small autograph collection. Edwin Collins Frost was an assistant and instructor of rhetoric at Brown University from 1895 to 1898 and the cataloguer of Marsden J. Perry's Shakespeare Collection from 1901 to 1907. William Henry Frost joined the New York Tribune in 1887 as a reporter and drama critic and was the author of four books for children.
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Frost Currency
The bank notes and documents in this collection were collected by Michael Freezy Frost. He was born in 1932 in Tulsa, Oklahoma and died on February 08, 2012 in McAllen, Texas. This collection contains examples of 26 pieces of currency, of varying types, issued in Rhode Island between 1775-1929, one bank note issued in Delaware in 1759, and 5 documents related to the fiscal history of 18th century Rhode Island.
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Grolier Club
The Grolier Club records, 1891-2009, include papers and materials of the Grolier Club of New York, America's oldest and largest society for bibliophiles and literary enthusiasts. The collection includes manuscripts, correspondence and ephemera related to the organization and its members. This is an artificial collection compiled over the years from donations made by W. Easton Louttit, Albert E. Lownes, and Samuel Streit ...more information
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Harper Square Press
Harper Square press was a publisher of poetry compillations, founded and edited by Phyllis Ford-Choyke and Arthur Davis Choyke and based in Chicago, Illinois. This collection includes manuscript poems, correspondence, biographical sketches, working papers, and business records.
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Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays
The Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays is composed of approximately 250,000 volumes of American and Canadian poetry, plays, and vocal music dating from 1609 to the present day. It is perhaps the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind in any research library. The works of most well-known (and many thousands of little-known) American and Canadian poets and playwrights, from the 18th century to the present day, are held comprehensively. There are significant holdings of early American literature, hymnals, songsters, little magazines, contemporary fine printing, extensive collections on Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe, women's writings, gay and lesbian literature, modern first editions, Yiddish-American literature, and French-Canadian literature. The Collection is fully cataloged, with records available in Josiah, the Library's online catalog.. Includes periodicals, broadsides, recordings, films, electronic resources, manuscripts, prints and photographs.
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Koopman (Harry Lyman)
Harry Lyman Koopman (1860-1937 ) was librarian from 1893 to 1930. In honor of Koopman at his retirement, Philip D. Sherman, class of 1902, who had been his student, presented his collection of literature, book arts, and the history of the book to the Library. "This collection contains over 5,000 first editions and rare books, manuscripts and association items, plus prints, drawings, and broadsides. It is a rich source for the study of English literature and the growth of fine printing from the works of Caxton and Chaucer in the 15th century to William Morris and William Butler Yeats in the 19th and 20th centuries." The Koopman Collection is notable for its prose fiction by Cooper, Irving, Holmes, and Melville, and for the collection of the works of Thackeray and Dickens issued in parts. Intended as a laboratory collection for the study of the art and history of the book, it includes the production of many late 19th century private presses, books issued in parts, and literary relics. Prints, Photographs, Museum objects, Specimen leaves listed in Koopman Accession book (in Archives).
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Laughlin (James)
Bequest of James Laughlin, poet and publisher of New Directions Press, and the gifts of his widow. It is composed of approximately 5,000 volumes from his personal library, and focuses on editions of William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Thomas Merton, and other major 20th century literary figures. At Mr. Laughlin's invitation, Library staff specifically selected authors and titles from his extensive collection for the express purpose of adding complementary prose titles to the Harris Collection's holdings of 20th century poetry and plays. Uncataloged. Lists available
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Lawson (Todd S. J.)
Todd S. J. Lawson was an accomplished mid-to-late twentieth century gay writer of both prose and poetry, a small press publisher and editor, and a journalist. This collection consists of a variety of materials, the bulk of which dates from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, and includes manuscripts, correspondence, print materials, business records, and a small collection of photographs and ephemeral materials. In addition to a substantial collection of manuscripts mainly from Lawson's own writings, it includes a significant number of printing proofs, and an interesting collection of scattered issues, including a few historic titles, from a variety of small press periodicals.
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Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts
Brown University Library holds some 50 manuscript codices as well as numerous manuscript documents and fragments, all housed in the John Hay Library. Most of these items were acquired as gifts over the past two centuries, some of them coming as parts of other named collections such as the Harry Lyman Koopman Collection, the Annmary Brown Memorial Collection, and the Albert E. Lownes Collection of Significant Books in the History of Science. Most are from western Europe and date from the 11th through the 17th centuries, and are in Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian, and other European languages, although we also hold three Ethiopic manuscripts in Ge'ez, and several in Arabic. The Minassian Collection of Persian, Mughal, and Indian Miniatures is also relevant to this collection.
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O'Hara
Literary and personal papers, 1979-1998, of Scott O'Hara (1961-1998), pornographic film actor, author, magazine publisher, also containing publications that include material by or about him.
The gay pulp paperbacks acquired as part of this collection are listed in the Gay Pulp Fiction database.
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Rare Books
A general rare book collection within special collections, consisting of approximately 700 titles from the fifteenth to the 20th centuries. It represents an early Library effort to identify rare materials within its collections.
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Reynolds (Horace Mason)
Correspondence, account books, ledgers, invoices, documents, and music music relating to Gottlieb Graupner, John Rowe Parker and the music-publishing industry in Boston, Massachusetts from 1802-1838, collected by writer/editor Horace Reynolds.
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San Fernando Poetry Journal
Founded in 1982 by Richard Cloke, the San Fernando Poetry Journal published only poetry. This collection contains primarily manuscript material, including typescript poems submitted for publication, edited manuscripts, and final proofs. There are also several folders of business records and correspondence and a folder of photographs.
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Second Coming Press
Second Coming Press published poetry and essays from 1972 to 1989, including works by Charles Bukowski, Gene Fowler, Hugh Fox, Diane Kruchkow, Al Masarik, Morty Sklar, Art Cuelho, and more. This collection includes Poems and essays, correspondence and manuscripts, business records, video tapes, reel to reel tapes, posters, slides, photographs, publishers' flyers, broadsides, and tearsheets.
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Shakespearian Advertiser printing blocks
Wood engraving printing blocks created by Edward S. Jones to illustrate a booklet titled "The Shakespearian Advertiser" published by Harlen P. Boyce in Providence, RI in 1871. The images are comic illustrations of quotes from various plays by William Shakespeare.
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Silver (Rollo)
This is the working library of Rollo G. Silver, Class of 1931, historian of early American printing, publishing, and typography. It includes circa 3,000 volumes, as well as 45 linear feet of notebooks containing transcriptions or reproductions of primary and secondary source materials. It records the historical development of the printing and publishing industries, particularly in the United States.
The collection includes 64 volumes of notebooks containing the source materials for all of Silver's writings in the history of American printing; include manuscript transcriptions, photographs, photostats, and photocopies from published and archival sources; some pamphlets; and typed drafts of some of Silver's own articles and addresses.
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Smith (Harry)
Harry Smith graduated from Brown in 1957, and by 1964 he had established his own literary magazine: The Smith. He went on to establish a second magazine, Pulpsmith, as well as a small press, Smith-Publishers, which published works of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama. This collection includes correspondence, book reviews, notebooks of prose and poetry, production files with galleys and page proofs, manuscripts, and photocopies.
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St. Martin's Press
In 1997, St. Martin's Press agreed to transfer their archives - thousands of publications as well as their business files - to the Library. In addition to receiving the complete inventory of St. Martin's Press publications dating back to the founding of the press in 1952, the Library continued to receive a copy of every new St. Martin's Press title as it was published until 2019. This gift brings to the Library the historical archive of one of the nation's most important trade publishing houses; additions to the archive take place regularly.
The collection includes archival copies of books produced by St. Martin's Press, which are retained by the Press for purposes of producing reprints in the future. These books are individual catalogued in BruKnow and stored at the Annex as part of the John Hay Library collections. Because they have been kept primarily for archival purposes, they will be retrieved for research use at the John Hay Library.
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Stillwell (Margaret Bingham)
The papers of Margaret Bingham Stillwell, librarian of the Annmary Brown Memorial, 1917 - 1953, and professor of bibliography, 1948 - 1953. Includes personal correspondence, incunabula census correspondence, Annmary Brown Memorial correspondence, manuscripts, notes, poetry, talks, subject files, personal papers, Hroswitha Club Papers, specimen pages and galley proofs of Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke.
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Stone Country Press
Founded, edited, and published by Judith Neeld from 1970 through 1990 Stone Country Press produced Patterns, a Literary Journal, from 1970 through 1973. In 1974 the publication changed its name to Stone Country, a Magazine of Poetry, Art and Letters. The collection is primarily made up of correspondence and manuscript drafts of material published by Stone Country Press. It also includes business records, promotional materials, and some printed items.
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Sunbury Press
From 1974 to 1988, Sunbury Press published women poets, blue-collar poets and minority poets. Founded and run by Virginia Scott, the press was based in Bronx, New York. This collection contains the camera-ready copy of several manuscripts, NEA grant materials, business records, legal files, and circulation and promotion materials.
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Textbook
A collection of approximately 4,500 textbooks on all subjects, dating from the mid-18th century to the 1930s, falling into the following categories:
History
Geography
Social studies/civics/politics
Arithmetic
Algebra
French
Spanish
German
English composition and rhetoric
Readers and primers for young students or those learning to read
English grammar and spelling
Greek and Latin
The most straightforward way to browse the collection is by using the card catalog; however,
many titles from the collection can be found in Josiah.
To find textbooks in a particular subject area, try a subject search; in the "subject" field, enter "textbooks" and a subject (the list above aren't necessarily the official subject headings). Alternatively, try keyword searches for words like "primer" and "grammar".
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Third & Elm Press
The archive of Alexander and Ilse Nesbitt's private press in Newport, Rhode Island. The Library also owns an extensive collection of the publications of the Third & Elm Press.
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Vagabond Press
Letters, drawings, manuscript poems, stories, articles, and printed materials which record the workings of a small press of the American literary underground of the Sixties, under the editorship of Bennett. Also includes video tapes and audio tapes.
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West Coast Poetry Review
Founded as a quarterly in 1970 by William Ransom, the West Coast Poetry Review was based in Reno, Nevada, and was a member of the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines. The magazine was later published and edited by poets William Lyman Fox and Bruce McAllister. This collection includes correspondence, editorial archives (with typescript poems and prose), production archives, material relating to copyright and financial business, and printed items.
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Winans (A. D.)
A. D. (Allan Davis) Winans is a native San Francisco poet and writer, part of the North Beach Beat era. He is the author of 45 books of poetry and prose, and he edited and published Second Coming Press for its entire l7 years. This collection contains correspondence, along with video and audio recordings of poetry readings and interviews between 1977 and 2008.
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