Brown University Library Collections
Early Printed Books Collections
Return to Collections A to Z Index
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1793 Library
The Library of Brown University, as represented in the Catalog published in 1793. 2,173 titles are listed. List and published catalog available.
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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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Dated Book
This collection consists of works cataloged in an early system in which the call number begins with a date. It represents the Library's first effort to tranfer rare books from the general stacks to a special collections environment. Includes many 15th and 16th century works.
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Foster
In 1934 Julia Foster, widow of William Eaton Foster, Class of 1873 and Librarian of the Providence Public Library from 1877 to 1930, presented one volume of her husband's collection, Horace's Opera (Florence, 1482), to the Library as a token of her intent to donate the entire collection.The complete 600 volume Foster Horace Collection with its finely printed editions from the presses of Aldus, Elsevir, Estienne, Plantin, Baskerville, Bodoni, Didot and others came to Brown in 1940.The collection includes editions, commentaries, school texts, translations and parodies.
For further information on the Foster Horace Collection see the article by Ben C. Clough (1889-1975), professor of English and Classics in Books at Brown, vol. 5, no. 2, December 1942.
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Grotius
One of the best collections in this country of Grotius' De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625), a foundation work in the science of international law. Most of the 79 complete editions of the work known to have been published between 1625 and 1939 are held in the collection. Interfiled with Hay Star and Cutter.
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Hawkins (Rush)
The Rush Hawkins collection (1750-1951(bulk 1830-1917)) contains personal, family, financial, and military correspondence and documents; photographs; and a variety of museum objects ranging from dinnerware and household items to clothing and personal accessories belonging to the Hawkins and Brown families. Most of the collection reflects the life and interests of Hawkins himself, with some items related to his wife Annmary Brown Hawkins and her family. Included in the papers are two significant sub-collections of correspondence: a collection of antebellum historical letters and documents from earlier generations of the Brown family, as well as individual letters from Thomas Jefferson, Nathaniel Greene, Edgar Allan Poe, and Napoleon I; and a collection of Civil War-related correspondence and documents that contains records of Hawkins' Zouaves and much Confederate material, including a subseries of Jefferson Davis's communications to the Senate of the Confederate States.
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History of Science
The History of Science Collections encompass books and manuscripts dating from the late 15th to the mid 20th century. Particular strengths are in the history of mathematics and astronomy.There are editions of classical authors on mathematics and astronomy, sixteenth and seventeenth century astronomical tables, and fifteenth and sixteenth century editions of Latin translations of Arabic astronomical and astrological texts. They provide many of the works fundamental to the study of the exact sciences during the Renaissance.
There are more than 4,000 significant works documenting the sciences in modern times, many of which were printed before 1800, beginning with the works of Galileo, Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Newton, and his followers. There are also early editions of works by Ampere, Francis Bacon, Boyle, Mme Curie, Einstein, Franklin, Helmholtz, von Humboldt, William James, Leibniz, Lyell, Maury, Napier, Pasteur, Priestly, and Vesalius.
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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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Lownes History of Science
In January of 1979, the Collection of Significant Books in the History of Science arrived as a bequest from Albert E. Lownes. His final gift of over 5,000 volumes plus hundreds of prints and manuscripts spanned the centuries of scientific thought from Ptolemy to Einstein. This was one of the three most important private collections of books of science in America and ranks as one of the most significant single collections ever received by the Brown University Library. Its greatest strength and depth is in natural history although its scope embraces significant works in all scientific fields. Lownes defined significance as being "books that have changed the world or man's way of seeing it. Significance also meant books that I found interesting." The collection contains over three-quarters of those texts recognized by scholars as the "great books" of science published since the middle of the 15th century.
Earlier, on the occasion of his 50th reunion, in 1970, Albert E. Lownes presented Brown University with the double elephant folio edition of John J. Audubon's Birds of America (London, 1827-1838),the most significant work of 19th century ornithology. Lownes also donated the library's one millionth item, a copy of Rene Descartes's early work on physiology, De Homine Figuris et Latinitate Donatus a Florentio Schuyl (Leyden, 1662), in 1954.
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Machiavelli
The Niccolo Machiavelli Collection is a major collection of first and early editions, dating from 1523, with an emphasis upon his political and historical works. Acquired by purchase in 1990. Interfiled with LC Starred Books.
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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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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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Smith Magic
The H. Adrian Smith Collection of Conjuring and Magicana, long considered one of the finest private libraries on conjuring and magic, includes 16th century titles on natural magic, alchemy, astrology, religious rites, and witchcraft. Later holdings include sections on conjuring, card tricks and games, magicians as performers, magic periodicals and other works intended for practicing magicians, posters, ephemera, and realia. The Collection is the gift and bequest of the collector, class of 1930, who as an undergraduate put himself through Brown by giving magic performances.
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Starred Book
Hay Star is the general rare book collection of the Brown University Library, covering a wide range of topics. The Hay Star collection is particularly strong for 18th and 19th century materials, as well as for 20th century ephemera, and includes occasional transfers from the general collections. Travel literature and historical narratives are particular strengths.
Researchers should note that many "named" collections of printed books are subsumed in Hay Star, including the following:
H. P. Lovecraft collection
Damon Collection of Fantasy and Imaginative Literature
Ames Collection of Illustrated Books
Brown-Ives Shakespeare Collection
Dated Books
Egyptology Collection
Author collections of works by Grotius, Machiavelli, Wells and Orwell
Kirk Collection on Alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous
Pillar Collection of Children's Literature
Schirmer Collection on Anti-Imperialism
Swan Antarctica Collection
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