THE
HAMMOND
COLLECTION
| AUTHOR
| TITLE
| YEAR
| NUMBER
|
| Brown, Charles Brockden
| Wieland, or, The transformation: an American tale
| 1798
| Ham 1638
|
| Cooper, James Fenimore
| Tales for fifteen, or, Imagination and Heart
| 1823
| Ham 1853
|
| Godwin, William
| St. Leon: a tale of the sixteenth century
| 1799
| Ham 1486
|
| Lewis, M. G.
| Ambrosio, or, The monk: a romance
| 1799
| Ham 852
|
| Peacock, Thomas Love
| Melincourt
| 1817
| Ham 603
|
| Radcliffe, Ann Ward
| Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne
| 1796
| Ham 919
|
| Smith, Charlotte Turner
| The odl [sic] manor house: a novel
| 1793
| Ham 1381
|
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."
"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
|