THE
HAMMOND
COLLECTION
"Where copies of these rare titles are held elsewhere. . .at the Houghton/ Widener, Stirling/Beinecke and the special collection (Singer) at Philadelphia, they cannot always match those in Hammond for quality or interest."
- James Raven, Director of the Cambridge Project for the Book, University of Cambridge
In the early nineteenth century James Hammond, a Newport, Rhode Island merchant, opened a lending library in his dry goods shop. Under his stewardship, the library, which he purchased in 1811, soon became the largest in New England, with more than 8000 volumes of fiction, plays, non-fiction, and poetry. The juxtaposition of books and ladies' garments was a new practice of the time. It led women to spend their hours of deshabille reading light fiction, a pastime Jane Austen mocked in Northanger Abbey. After Hammond's death in 1866, his holdings were broken up and sold at auction. Robert Lenox Kennedy, a nephew of James Lenox, one of the founders of the New York Public Library, purchased part of the collection for this Library. In 1995 the Library received a New York State Conservation and Preservation grant to care for some of the unique titles. Hammond's books had been read until they fell apart. He often stayed up late at night repairing his precious volumes. "A book, it mattered not how badly worn," he said, "was never to be given up and thrown aside."
Additional Information:
The 1,836 volume Hammond Collection, more fully/correctly "The Circulating Library of James Hammond of Newport, Rhode Island," was once part of a social library designed for commercial profit, representing the reading tastes of New Englanders from 1783 until about 1860. David Kaser writes, "The largest circulating library in New England before and after the mid-century was that operated in Newport, Rhode Island, by James Hammond... Hammond, who also maintained a dry goods emporium, built the library carefully and well, and by 1852 he was able to offer 8,000 volumes to his patrons. Some 5,000 of the volumes were novels..."
Approximately one-third of these fiction titles were donated the The New York Society Library in 1868. The Minerva Press in the years between the death of Smollett and the rise of Scott was the chief purveyor of the circulating novel. Anyone researching English fiction from this press will find this collection that contains 138 Minerva Press books essential.
The Hammond Collection contains little held or known works by such authors at Catherine Cuthbertson, Catherine Hutton, Mary Meeke, Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni and Augusta Stuart, to name only a few. Researchers in publishing history and the book arts of binding, paper, illustration and typography will find examples here of works published or printed outside the major cities in the 18th and early 19th century. Thus we have titles published in Poughkeepsie and Fleetwood, New York; Raleigh and Newbern, North Carolina; in Portsmout and Amherst, New Hampshire.
A Letter from Marcus A. McCorison
"Recently I had an opportunity to visit The New York Society Library where I was shown the range of book shelves holding the hundreds of titles that make up the James Hammond's Circulating Library. Hammonds Circulating Library originated in Newport, Rhode Island, at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The collection was given to the Society Library in 1868. Because it remains intact, it demonstrates the reading tastes of American readers of light literature of its period better than any other known, surviving collection.
"With the rapid increase in scholarly interest in 'book history' and in the history of American culture and reading, this survival constitues an invaluable resource for such studies.
"Hammond's Circulating Library includes a considerable number of unique titles, let alone unique editions of known titles. For example, James Fenimore Cooper's Tales for Fifteen (N.Y., 1823), although not unique, is his most scarce book. It will be found on the shelf in its rightful place.
"As the president emeritus of the American Antiquarian Society with an intense personal interest in American cultural history, particularly that of printing, bibliography, and book history extending over forty-five years, I cannot endorse strongly enough the scholarly importance of the Hammond Circulating Library and the efforts of The New York Society Library to properly catalogue and preserve this unique, bibliographical resource."
Selected Hammond Books:
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