Houghton Library is the primary repository for rare books and manuscripts at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. It is part of the Harvard College Library within the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences is the largest of the seven faculties that constitute Harvard University.Headquartered principally in Cambridge, Massachusetts and centered in the historic Harvard Yard, FAS is the only division of the university responsible for both undergraduate and...

. Houghton is located on the south side of Harvard Yard

Harvard Yard

Harvard Yard is a grassy area of about , adjacent to Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that constitutes the oldest part and the center of the campus of Harvard University...

, next to Widener Library

Widener Library

The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, commonly known as Widener Library, is the primary building of the library system of Harvard University. Located on the south side of Harvard Yard directly across from Memorial Church, Widener serves as the centerpiece of the 15.6 million-volume Harvard...

.

History

Harvard's first special collections library was the Treasure Room of Widener Library

Widener Library

The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, commonly known as Widener Library, is the primary building of the library system of Harvard University. Located on the south side of Harvard Yard directly across from Memorial Church, Widener serves as the centerpiece of the 15.6 million-volume Harvard...

. In March 1938, looking to supply Harvard's most valuable collections with more space and improved storage conditions, Harvard College Librarian Keyes DeWitt Metcalf

Keyes Metcalf

Keyes DeWitt Metcalf was an American librarian. He has been identified as one of the 100 most important leaders in librarianship by the journal American Libraries. In a career spanning over 75 years, he worked in various roles at the New York Public Library and served as the director of the...

 presented the Harvard Corporation with a set of proposals which would eventually lead to the creation of Houghton Library, Lamont Library, and the New England Deposit Library. Funding for Houghton was raised privately, with the largest portion coming from Arthur A. Houghton Jr., in the form of shares of stock in Corning Glass Works. Construction was largely completed by the fall of 1941, and the library opened on February 28, 1942.

Houghton holds collections of papers of Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

, Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...

, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...

, Margaret Fuller

Margaret Fuller

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, commonly known as Margaret Fuller, was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first full-time American female book reviewer in journalism...

, John Keats

John Keats

John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...

, Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...

, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...

 and his family, Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868...

, along with the papers of other notable transcendentalists, Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

, T.S. Eliot, E.E. Cummings, Henry James

Henry James

Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

, William James

William James

William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...

, James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

, John Updike

John Updike

John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....

 and many others.

Houghton also holds the letters of Colonel

Colonel

Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...

 Robert Gould Shaw

Robert Gould Shaw

Robert Gould Shaw was an American officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War. As colonel, he commanded the all-black 54th Regiment, which entered the war in 1863. He was killed in the Second Battle of Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina...

, who commanded the 54th Massachusetts during the Civil War, and was killed during the assault on Fort Wagner

Fort Wagner

Fort Wagner was a beachhead fortification on Morris Island, South Carolina, that covered the southern approach to Charleston harbor...

.

Collections

Houghton has five main curatorial departments:

• Early Books and Manuscripts, which includes a large collection of Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and over 2,500 incunabula.
• Early Modern Books and Manuscripts, featuring the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the largest collections of books and manuscripts relating to Samuel Johnson
  Samuel Johnson
  Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
  
   and his circle.
• Modern Books and Manuscripts, which recently acquired the papers of novelist John Updike
  John Updike
  John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
  
  .
  • Modern Books & Manuscripts New Acquisitions Blog
• Printing & Graphic Arts which documents the history and art of book production.
• The Harvard Theatre Collection covering the history of the performing arts.

External links

• Houghton Library home page
• Online exhibition: Public Poet, Private Man: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at 200
• Online exhibition: Life is in the Transitions: William James, 1842-1910
• Online exhibition: Books in Books: Reflections on Reading and Writing in the Middle Ages
• Online exhibition: Harvard's Lincoln
• Online exhibition: A Monument More Durable Than Brass: The Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson
• Online exhibition: History of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Collection
• Houghton Library Blog
• Department of Modern Books & Manuscripts new acquisitions blog