Special Collections – Wellesley College Libraries

Special Statement: For the duration of the Clapp Library renovation project, Special Collections is open to class visits and on-campus researchers by appointment only. Please email specialcollections@wellesley.edu for assistance.

The Special Collections, located in the Margaret Clapp Library, contains rare books, manuscripts, and limited editions. These may be consulted in the Special Collections reading room. Readers are required to register and present photo identification. The catalog is online and integrated into the entire Wellesley College Library catalog. The collections are available for research, free of charge to students and faculty of the Wellesley College community, as well as visiting scholars, regardless of academic affiliation. Additionally, you can explore The Digital Repository to find digitized content.

We encourage both individual research visits and class visits. Email specialcollections@wellesley.edu for assistance with booking a class. More information on planning your visit is available at our Visitor Information page.

Please see Policies and Procedures for more information on collection development, reproductions, permissions and reading room guidelines.

Collections

Clasped hands of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, cast in bronze by Harriet Hosmer, 1853.

The Browning Collection at Wellesley is part of the larger English Poetry Collection established by George Herbert Palmer. It contains first editions of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s and Robert Browning’s published works, as well as manuscripts, related memorabilia, and the unique attraction of the couple’s original love letters.

Among the most famous correspondences in literary history, the love letters were written almost daily from January 1845 to September 1846, and offer a thrilling tale of intellectual sympathy, mutual admiration, and a daring elopement.

Wellesley College has partnered with Baylor University to provide scholars and romantics alike with unprecedented, free access to digitized manuscripts of the letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. The virtual collection includes the 573 courtship letters between the eminent Victorian poets, which are housed in the Margaret Clapp Libary’s Special Collections at Wellesley.

The online collection, launched on February 14, 2012, includes complete digitized versions and transcriptions of the courtship letters and their envelopes, plus more than 800 additional letters from Baylor’s Armstrong Browning Library collection.

Henry Mayhew. London labour and the London poor. London, 1851.

The Durant Collection consists of 7,600 volumes originally presented to Wellesley College in 1875 by its founders Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fowle Durant. These books formed the nucleus of the general collection. In the 1950s, the age and value of the Durant Collection warranted its move to Special Collections. Essentially a gentleman’s library of the nineteenth century, it is a remarkable record of Victorian taste, both English and American. The Durants were keen observers of their time, and their collection reflects their wide ranging interests in the social sciences, history, education, classical civilization, exploration, and travel.

Martha Young. Plantation songs for my lady's banjo. New York, 1901. — Martha Young. Plantation songs for my lady’s banjo. New York, 1901.

The Elbert Collection of approximately 800 volumes on slavery, emancipation, and Reconstruction was assembled by Ella Smith, class of 1888, the second black graduate of Wellesley College, and by her husband, Dr. Samuel G. Elbert. In 1904, they purchased a collection of more than 300 volumes gathered by Robert Mara Adger, a member of the Banneker Institute and the American Negro Historical Society. This became the nucleus of the Elbert Collection, which was presented to the College in 1938. Mrs. Elbert and her son added to it until 1955. Personal narratives, autobiographies, tracts, and pamphlets share the shelves with volumes of poetry, novels, and folklore. Works by Charles Chesnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and James Weldon Johnson are strong.

Though American in focus, the Elbert Collection is not limited to works by American authors nor to information about slavery in the United States. It includes important works published in England, translations from the French, material on the experiment in Liberia, and slave conditions in the colonies of South Africa and in the West Indies.

For a detailed description of the Adger portion of the collection, see Wendy Ball and Anthony Martin, Rare Afro-Americana: a Reconstruction of the Adger Library, Boston, G.K. Hall, 1981.

William Blake. Songs of innocence. 1789.

The English Poetry Collection is the largest of the Wellesley Special Collections, with over 12,000 volumes and fifteen linear feet of autograph letters and manuscripts.

It was established in 1911 by George Herbert Palmer in memory of his wife, Alice Freeman Palmer, the second president of the College. The first installment of Professor Palmer’s gift was a collection of first editions of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, soon followed by first editions of Blake, Shelley and Tennyson. Professor Palmer’s intention in giving his English poetry collection to Wellesley was that it would be enjoyed by students and faculty of the College, and he encouraged others to add to his original collection.

The rare English Poetry volumes originally acquired by the Durants, the 1532 Chaucer and editions of Milton, among them, were eventually integrated into this collection. Other sizable collections came from Wellesley faculty members, notably, Katharine Lee Bates’ collection of Yeats, and Elizabeth Manwaring’s collection of T.S. Eliot. The enduring jewel of the English Poetry Collection is the original love letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, given in 1930 by Caroline Hazard, fifth president of Wellesley College.

The English Poetry Collection maintains both a retrospective and contemporary scope, encompassing over five and a half centuries, from Geoffrey Chaucer to Ted Hughes, and from Anne Bradstreet to Maya Angelou. Modern poetry is actively collected, thanks to a fund endowed by Professor Palmer.

For a description of the original Palmer portion of the collection, see George Herbert Palmer, A Catalogue of Early and Rare Editions of English Poetry, Collected and Presented to Wellesley College, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1923.

The Guy Warren Walker, Jr. Collection has been on deposit since 1981 from the St. Mark’s School in Southborough, Massachusetts, and consists of 384 volumes documenting the history of book illustration. The most beautiful and significant specimens of each century are here assembled to demonstrate the use of various media and styles in the printed book. From early illuminated manuscripts to twentieth century livres de peintre, the Guy Walker, Jr. Collection complements the Book Arts Collection.

Hans Christian Andersen. Fairy Tales. Philadelphia, 1899.

The Juvenile Collection, built through the generosity of many individual donors, has been steadily growing to its present size of over 1,000 volumes. Though it contains some eighteenth-century works, the collection is composed for the most part of 19th- and early 20th-century material. Primers, songbooks, folk tales, and fairy tales provide excellent source materials for the study of social history, psychology, literature, and book illustration.

In recent years, literature on the education of children, particularly of girls, has been collected to support the Education Department curriculum at Wellesley. Works by Thomas Bewick and his American follower, Alexander Anderson, the Dalziel brothers, Gustave Doré, Kate Greenaway, Walter Crane, and Randolph Caldecott are among the offerings of the Juvenile Collection.

Hope M. Waddell. Twenty-nine years in the West Indies and Central Africa. London, 1863.

The Marks Collection, bequeathed in 1964, contains some 150 volumes and forty-five linear feet of documents concerning Jamaica. They were assembled by Jeannette Marks of the class of 1899 during her research for her book The Family of the Barrett (Macmillan, 1938), which concerns the Barrett family plantation in Jamaica. The Marks collection is further supported by the Browning portion of the English Poetry Collection and by the Elbert Collection.

Federico Frezzi. Quattro reami. Italy, between 1450 and 1499.

The Plimpton Collection was presented to Wellesley in 1904 by George Arthur Plimpton in memory of his wife, Frances Taylor Pearsons, class of 1884. Gathered for the most part by Mrs. Plimpton herself, the collection of 1,200 volumes represents the history of Italian literature from the 14th to the 17th century.

It is renowned for its fine Renaissance manuscripts, incunabula, and early editions of Boccaccio, Dante, and Petrarch, many still in their original bindings. Savonarolla’s tracts and sermons are well represented, and holdings of early editions of Romances of Chivalry are particularly strong.

Margaret Hastings Jackson, an early curator of the collection, compiled The Catalogue of the Frances Taylor Pearsons Plimpton Collection of Italian Books and Manuscripts in the Library of Wellesley College, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1929.

More recently, the pre-1600 manuscripts in the Plimpton Collection have been cataloged with complete codicological descriptions by Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis. The entire Plimpton collection can be searched in the online catalog under its name.

Augustin Pyramus de Candolle. Plantarum succulentarum historia. Paris, 1804.

The Rare Books Collection owes its existence to the generosity of the College founders, as it was established with the most significant treasures of the Durants’ own collection. Throughout his lifetime, Mr. Durant acquired books and manuscripts for the College Library.

Among these are a large papyrus fragment of the Book of the Dead, ca. 500 B.C.E., a vellum charter signed by Holy Roman Emperor Otto III in 997 C.E., an Italian 15th century gradual, early German Bibles, and tracts by Martin Luther. The Rare Books Collection has been augmented substantially over the years by purchases and gifts from faculty, alumnae, and friends, increasing its size to about 12,000 volumes in a variety of fields. Illuminated manuscripts, incunabula, the Milne Collection of English Bibles, works in the history of science, philosophy, classics, and first editions of major literary works make this an unusually rich resource for scholars and visiting classes.

The ongoing restoration of rare books and manuscripts has been made possible by the generous gift of Walter C. Klein, who established the Mary Eddy Klein ’42 and Margaret Kennedy Klein ’72 Preservation Fund for Special Collections.

The Ruskin Collection of 866 volumes was presented in 1920 by Charles Eliot Goodspeed, well-known Boston bookseller and father of two alumnae. A comprehensive one-author collection, it contains editions of Ruskin’s major works in the original parts, many rare pamphlets, autographs, presentation copies, exhibition catalogs, drawings, and watercolors, as well as biographical and critical material.

Among the collection’s treasures is a watercolor self-portrait, and several unpublished sketchbooks of the American artist Francesca Alexander, whom Ruskin befriended in Florence.

Eben N. Horsford. The Indian names of Boston, and their meaning. Cambridge, 1886.

The Alcove of North American Languages was given in 1887 by Eben Norton Horsford, son of a missionary among the Senecas and friend of Henry Fowle Durant. The printed catalog of Professor Horsford’s collection lists 280 volumes, including dictionaries, vocabularies, grammars, translations of the Bible in Indian languages, and works in or about early primitive languages from all parts of the world.

Professor Horsford’s collection was gradually increased, most notably by the John Wesley Powell Collection of North American Languages of more than 1,000 items, received in 1891, and by the literary remains of the Reverend Silas Rand, a missionary among the Micmacs of Nova Scotia.

Sadly, the entire collection was decimated in the fire of 1914 which consumed College Hall. Only a few items from the Powell Collection remain, five of the Micmac manuscripts of the Reverend Silas Rand, and 231 printed books from the original collection.

The following publications provide more information on the collection:

“Alcove of North American Languages, Wellesley College,” a paper read by Professor Horsford at the annual meeting of the Library Council of Wellesley College, June 13, 1887.
Ivy G. Campbell, Catalogue of Works in the Alcove of North American Languages and Bibliography of Works in the Alcove of North American Languages, 1916. Typescript, in Special Collections.
Card file of books destroyed in the fire of 1914, in Special Collections.

Susan kae Grant. Radio-active substances. Dallas, TX, 1995.

The Books Arts Collection is devoted to the history and art of the book. The research component of the collection consists of over 3,500 volumes documenting all aspects of book production: papermaking, printing, illustration, binding, bibliography, and publishing. In addition, there are over 4,000 volumes of specimens, ranging from the great typographers such as Aldus, Baskerville and Bodoni up to the twentieth-century renaissance of modern fine printing. Here, for example, one can find works from the Kelmscott Press side by side with works by contemporary book artists, such as Claire Van Vliet and Ron King, including limited editions, innovative binding structures, handmade papers, and unique artists’ books.

Several large gifts have enriched the Book Arts Collection. Annis Van Nuys Schweppe, class of 1903, gave her Grabhorn Press Collection of over 580 volumes and a large group of ephemera.

In 1983, James F. O’Gorman, Professor of the History of American Art at Wellesley College, gave his Hammatt Billings Collection. Containing over 175 books illustrated by Billings, as well as an archival component including photographs, drawings, engravings, and a scrapbook, the Billings Collection is an unparalleled resource documenting the life and enormously diverse output of this 19th century architect, illustrator, and graphic designer. A printed catalog, written and annotated by O’Gorman, is available from Special Collections upon request. Also of interest is Professor O’Gorman’s book, Accomplished in All Departments of Art: Hammatt Billings of Boston, 1818-1874, Amherst, MA, University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.

In 1990, Isabel Ehrlich Goodman, class of 1933, and her husband C

harles gave to Wellesley their extensive personal library, which included a book arts collection of over 1,300 volumes. The Goodman gift substantially augmented the existing Book Arts Collection, particularly in productions of twentieth century American private presses, which have been consulted by individual students and art classes. To further support collecting in this growing field, the Goodman family established an endowed book fund as well.