A letter from John Hancock, signer of the Declaration of Independence, to the Massachusetts legislature in 1787.

The Historical Manuscript Collection consists of literary and historical letters, documents and manuscripts with particular strengths in British literary manuscripts of the nineteenth century and in letters and documents of American statesmen from the Revolutionary period through the twentieth century.

The British Romantic authors are represented by a sizeable group of materials, among which are eleven letters of the Scottish poet Joanna Baillie (1762–1851) and twenty-seven letters, eight brief manuscripts, two printed proofs and related pieces of Thomas Campbell (1777–1844), the Scottish editor and poet, dating from 1805 to 1844. “Christabel” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) appears in a notebook in the hand of Sarah Stoddart, the future wife of the essayist William Hazlitt. This manuscript differs substantially from the printed text, which did not appear until more than a decade later, in 1816. The notebook also contains, in a different hand, the text of “Dejection: An Ode” and Wordsworth’s sonnet to Napoleon. In Coleridge’s own hand are seven short poems, five in English and two in Latin, dated 1832, as well as a long undated letter circa 1822 to his physician and biographer James Gillman. Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) manuscripts include the last leaf of his 1848 essay on Charles Lamb with a large number of deletions and corrections, worksheets of material which he edited for the Westmorland Gazette in 1818 and 1819, and a fragment from an essay on political economy. Several letters include two to his publisher J. A. Hessey and four from 1833 to the agents of Lady Nairne. Walter Savage Landor’s (1775–1864) poem “To Alexandre” is present in a signed undated manuscript, and a Landor letter to John Kenyon, dated 1854, incorporates another poem. There are ten letters and manuscripts of several songs by the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852). Sir Walter Scott (1772–1832) is represented by a manuscript of a three page verse epilogue to the play based on his novel St. Ronan’s Well, which differs from the printed version. Over thirty letters to the author and adventurer Edward John Trelawny (1792–1881) include correspondence from Charles Armitage Brown, Richard Monckton Milnes and H. Buxton Forman. There are seven illustrations by the artist John Leech (1817–1864) as well as a letter to his friend and fellow caricaturist George Cruikshank (1792–1878), and Cruikshank’s own manuscript of J. W. Howell’s Bubble Burst (1856) and his humorous illustrations for The Tooth-Ache by Horace Mayhew (1849?).

In addition to a Lincoln collection (described elsewhere), Edward C. Stone donated a collection of letters and documents of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, which includes a rare Button Gwinnett petition, in his hand, to Governor James Wright of Georgia, dated 1769; a collection of letters and documents of the signers of the Constitution; and two sets of letters and documents of the Presidents of the United States, one set being of the first twenty-nine Presidents, Washington to Hoover, and the other of Washington to Franklin D. Roosevelt. These collections have been augmented by purchases and by various documents found in other collections within the Department.

Among other American historical documents are an eleven-page letter of April 15, 1815, from John Jay (1745–1829), first Chief Justice of the United States, to his friend John Murray, Jr. (the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Byer in memory of Barbara Roberta Horwitz); and a bound manuscript of Charles Sumner’s speech “Issues of the Presidential Election,” which was delivered October 30, 1869, at the Cambridge City Hall.

The Irving P. and Helen Joy Fox Collection, given by Mrs. Archibald Crossley and her brother Fred Joy Fox in memory of their parents (both graduates of Boston University, Class of 1883) consists of letters and signatures of prominent American clergymen, politicians and public figures, among them Henry Ward Beecher, Daniel Webster and William H. Seward. Central to the collection is a group of letters to Silas Deane (1737–1789), a member of the Continental Congress and a diplomat who was sent to France by Congress with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee in 1776 to strengthen connections with France. The letters are from Benedict Arnold, 1775; George Washington, 1778; the Count d’Estaing, 1778; General Philip Schuyler, 1779; John Jay, 1781; and Benjamin Franklin, 1782. With these is the order of Congress written and signed by John Hancock as president, authorizing the Commissioners’ trip to France to secure by purchase or loan “eight line of battle ships of 74 and 64 guns well manned and fitted in every respect for service.” Letters written between 1883 and 1886 from the future art critic Bernard Berenson to Irving P. Fox (they knew each other as students at Boston University) are also part of this collection.

Other facets of life in the United States during the nineteenth century are shown in the records of the Mercantile Library Association of Boston founded in 1820. This was one of the first organizations whose purpose was to improve the “intellectual and moral condition of young men engaged as merchants’ clerks” by means of a lending library, lectures, debates and classes. Complementing these records, with a direct description of working class experience in Boston in the 1840s, is a group of over fifty letters from members of the Swallow family who came to Boston from rural New Hampshire and worked for various merchants in the city. On deposit from Mrs. Charles C. Pineo is a group of papers by and about her grandfather Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866), a mental healer whose most noteworthy patient was Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Christian Science movement. Among a collection of twelve letters from the inventor Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) is one written to his parents in 1879 when he was involved in litigation over the patent rights to the telephone.

The English-born American author Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849–1924) is represented by a group of sixty-four letters written to her, many from English actors and writers. They include a letter from Victoria Mary of Teck, later Queen Mary, consort of King George V of England, and eleven letters from Israel Zangwill, the novelist, playwright and critic. Over forty letters from Julia Marlowe (1866–1950), the great Shakespearean actress, reflect American theatrical life from 1890 to 1917.

Other collectors have presented the University with varied items, such as the gifts of Raymond Thornburg, consisting of: handsome signed documents of Napoleon I, Emperor of France, 1808, George III, King of England, 1813, and Oscar, King of Sweden, 1876; an appointment of 1776 signed by John Hancock; and over one hundred American, English and French propaganda posters from the First World War, which include work by the illustrators Howard Chandler Christy and James Montgomery Flagg. The William E. Barton collection of Samaritan materials preserves manuscripts, photographs of the sacred Samaritan Abisa Scroll, and Barton’s personal papers and articles from the period 1903 to 1926. The manuscripts include a fragment of a twelfth-century Samaritan Pentateuch and unpublished texts in Arabic by the High Priest Jacob.