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Special Collections:
Alphabetical Listing of Special Collections in the Burns Library

Balkan Studies Collection | Boston / Area Studies Collection | British Catholic Authors Collection | Caribbeana Collection | Congressional Archives Collection | Detective Fiction Collection | Fine Print Collection | Irish Collection | Japanese Prints | Jesuitana Collection | Liturgy and Life Collection | Named Collections | Nursing Archives | Salem Divines Collection | Nicholas M. Williams Ethnological Collection


  • Balkan Studies Collection. The collection consists of some 10,000 volumes, about half of which are 19th and 20th century Romanian works largely from the private collections of Professors Radu Florescu, John Campbell, and George Ursul. St. Kliment Ohridski University Press in Sophia, Bulgaria has donated a copy of almost every title it has published since its founding in 1986, totaling some 2,100 volumes. In addition, various other Bulgarian presses have deposited copies of their publications, creating one of the largest archives in America of Bulgarian imprints. This archive is enhanced by the Dr. Anny Newman Collection of some 1,500 volumes, which is especially strong in Bulgarian and Croatian imprints.

  • Boston / Area Studies Collection. Holdings of materials relating to the history of Boston are diverse and extensive. In addition to a large collection of printed material, documenting the history and literature of Boston from earliest times to the present, the Library houses a number of discrete manuscript collections that are described in more detail under the Library's heading for manuscripts. These manuscript collections include the Boston Theological Institute Records, [1968?]-1989, the Ellerton J. Brehaut Collection, the Citywide Coordinating Council (Boston, Mass.) Archive relating to the desegregation of Boston's public schools, the Concord School of Philosophy Collection, 1824-1903, the Amelia Landais Correspondence, 1823-1830, the George Byron Lord Correspondence, 1862-1866, and the Town of Weymouth Assessor's Reports, 1789-1793. In addition, the Bostoniana collection includes a significant number of first editions of books by and about prominent literary figures in the history of Boston. Also of importance are the archives of several Boston cultural organizations, including the Eire Society of Boston and the Charitable Irish Society (20th century materials only). There are also miscellaneous collections on Boston theatre, music, and other cultural activities. Forming a separate collection of great interest, not only for banking history in Boston but also for genealogical studies, is the Library's Banking Archives, consisting of the official records of four Boston savings banks, the Hibernia Savings Bank, the Home Savings Bank, the Union Savings Bank of Boston, and the Warren Institution for Savings. The Library also houses a small archive on the Provident Institution for Savings in the Town of Boston, 1816-1966.

  • British Catholic Authors Collection. The British Catholic Authors Collection features the manuscripts and published works of leading Catholic writers in the British Isles from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This collection seeks to document the British Catholic experience from Catholic Emancipation in 1829 to the present as reflected in the writings of men and women whose Catholic faith influenced their work. Noted especially for its rich holdings on Coventry Patmore, Francis Thompson, Hilaire Belloc, Graham Greene, and Elizabeth Jennings, this collection also boasts strong holdings on John Henry Newman, Alice and Wilfrid Meynell, Edith Sitwell, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Maurice Baring, G. K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, David Jones, Eric Gill, Peter Levi, Philip Caraman, Frederick Copleston, Peter Hebblethwaite, and Brocard Sewell. The collection also includes impressive holdings on British Catholic publishers, such as the Burns, Oates and Washbourne Press, Stanbrook Abbey Press, and Aylesford Press. See also Named Collections.

    • Coventry Patmore Collection. A popular Victorian poet, nominated in the 1840's as one of the 'Immortals' of the Pre-Raphelite Brotherhood, Patmore is best known for the lengthy narrative poem, The Angel in the House about his wooing and marriage to Emily, the daughter of a popular preacher and tutor to the young John Ruskin. The Burns Library holds this original manuscript, as well as various other Patmore manuscripts. It also holds a comprehensive collection of Patmore's published works, strengthened in recent years by the donation of the Ian Anstruther Collection of Coventry Patmore. A collated edition of the Angel, compiled by Patricia Aske and edited by Ian Anstruther, was published by Haggerston Press in London and Boston College in 1998 and is available through the John J. Burns Library.

    • Francis Thompson Collection. This is the most comprehensive and extensive collection of the original manuscripts, correspondence, and printed works of the poet Francis Thompson (1859-1907) to be found anywhere. It includes the original holograph manuscript of Thompson's most famous poem, the "Hound of Heaven." A new edition of Thompson's poetry, edited by Thompson scholar and biographer Brigid Boardman, will be published in the fall of 2000 by Haggerston Press in London and will be available through the John J. Burns Library.

    • Hilaire Belloc Collection. This collection includes the writer's personal library and the great bulk of his manuscripts and correspondence. Belloc (1870-1953) was an essayist, novelist, poet, biographer, historian, lecturer, controversialist, and politician whose output was prodigious. So extensive is this collection that the correspondence files alone total some 160,000 individual items. He wrote some 150 titles, served in Parliament, lectured extensively, and corresponded with virtually every prominent figure in the fields of art, literature, religion and politics throughout the first half of the twentieth century.

    • Graham Greene Library and Archive. In 1995 the Burns Library acquired the 60,000-item official archive and the 3,000-volume personal library of Graham Greene (1904-1991), whom many consider the finest English novelist of the twentieth century. Before this acquisition, the Burns Library had already accumulated a significant collection of Greene's manuscripts and published works. Combined, these holdings now represent the most extensive collection of Greene anywhere. Many of the books in Greene's Library are annotated, some rather extensively, by Greene. A good number are presentation copies, inscribed by their authors to Greene.

    • Elizabeth Jennings Collection. One of England's most beloved modern poets, Jennings, born in 1926, was described by the poet Peter Levi, as 'one of the few living poets we could not do without.' The Jennings Collection boasts a comprehensive collection of her published works, including a number of presentation copies inscribed by the poet to her late mother, plus more than nineteen archival boxes of holograph notebooks crammed with thousands of poems, many of them never published. The manuscript holdings also include a draft of an autobiography and various other manuscripts and correspondence, making this arguably the most extensive collection of Jennings anywhere.

    • Burns and Oates Collection. Comprising over 6,000 titles, this collection consists of the file-copy library maintained by the prominent English Catholic publishing house, which was the official publisher in England to the Holy See. Publication dates range from 1848 to the 1950s. Founded in 1848 in London by James Burns (1808-1871), a Glasgow-educated son of a Presbyterian minister who converted to Catholicism in 1845, the press published John Henry Newman's religious novel Loss and Gain as its first work. It became Burns and Lambert, then Burns, Lambert and Oates and then Burns, Oates, and Washbourne before returning to Burns and Oates. Wilfrid Meynell and his son Francis, who founded the Nonesuch Press, were associated with the press, as was the noted typographer and historian of printing, Stanley Morison.

  • Caribbeana Collection (Nicholas M. Williams Memorial Collection). Assembled by the Jesuit missionary and ethnologist, Joseph Williams, and named in honor of his father, this collection includes more than 10,000 volumes documenting the history, life and culture of the people of Jamaica and their African antecedents. It also includes the largest manuscript collection of Anansi folk tales in existence. The collection is especially strong on nineteenth century publications on West Africa and the Middle East. In recent years this collection has been expanded to include the Arthur Morrissey, M.D, Collection of Haitian paintings, consisting of more than 30 framed paintings by various Haitian artists, mostly done in the 1950s and '60s. Artists include Prefete Duffaut, Seneque Obin, and possibly Louverture Poisson.

  • Congressional Archives Collection. This collection focuses on Massachusetts leaders who have served in national political office and have strong ties to Boston College. The collection currently includes the papers of former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr., a 1936 graduate of Boston College; U.S. Representative Robert F. Drinan, S.J., a 1942 graduate of Boston College and former dean of the Boston College Law School, the only Catholic priest ever to have served in Congress; U.S. Representative Edward Boland, author of the Boland Amendment and a 36-year member of Congress from Springfield who attended Boston College; and U.S. Representative Margaret Heckler, a graduate of the Boston College School of Law, who also served as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Reagan Administration and as U.S. Ambassador to Ireland.

  • Detective Fiction Collection. This collection seeks to document the history of American detective fiction. It is anchored by the Rex Stout archive, which represents the best collection in existence of the personal papers, literary manuscripts, and published works of Stout, creator of the Nero Wolfe mysteries. Other major gifts to this collection include the Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Collection of Nick Carter mysteries and early dime novels, the Thomas J. Shamon Mystery Collection, the Judson C. Sapp Collection of Rex Stout, the Marion Wilcox Collection of Rex Stout and the John McAleer Collections, which include major holdings of Stout and various other detective fiction writers. McAleer, Stout's biographer and a mystery writer in his own right, not only donated his extensive personal collection of first editions and signed copies of Stout, but also gave the library his impressive crime fiction collection. McAleer wrote: "The literature of detection is about the protection of civilization by those courageous and competent enough to save it. It flourishes only in a society where readers' sympathies are on the side of law and order. Its intent is to show that society is at its most secure and people happiest when, in an increasingly relativistic world, they can find their identity in a stable moral order where the forms and manners governing their social obligations are fixed."

    • Rex Stout Archive. Donated to Boston College in 1980 by the Stout family, the collection includes more than fifty book manuscripts plus another 65 manuscripts for various Stout publications, such as reviews, articles and introductions to books. There are also several boxes of correspondence, notebooks, legal papers, including publishing contracts, and archival material pertaining to various organizations in which Stout was active. The collection also includes more than 1,000 published volumes, featuring 20 first editions, 750 foreign editions of Stout's published works, and some 250 miscellaneous books from Stout's personal library. For Stout fans, these latter books are those that appear in Nero Wolfe's office. Artifacts, ephemera and photographs neatly round out this comprehensive archive. The Stout family has continued to add to the Stout Archive, providing, for example, tapes of television productions of Stout's works. Archival copies of all recent Stout reprints are also deposited at Burns by the publisher per instructions of the Stout family. The McAleer, Sapp and Wilcox donations have further strengthened the Stout collection.

  • Fine Print Collection. This collection consists of the output of a number of small, special presses, including some hand presses, known for the quality of their workmanship and design. It subsumes a number of smaller named presses such as the Aylesford Press, Golden Cockerel Press, Nonesuch Press, St. Dominic's Press, September Press, the Skelton Press, and the Stanbrook Abbey Press. The collection is especially rich in holdings of the work of Eric Gill and David Jones. In addition to many published works, the collection includes correspondence, original drawings, paintings, stone carvings and woodcut blocks.

  • Irish Collection. The Irish Collection at Burns is widely regarded as the premier collection of its kind outside Ireland. It contains more than 20,000 volumes, some 5,000 pamphlets and various manuscript collections ranging from individual letters to the complete archives of prominent literary figures. It was formally established as a special collection in 1948 with the appointment of historian Helen Landreth as Special Irish Collection Curator. From its beginnings, the Special Irish Collection was noted for its strong holdings of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, newspapers, periodicals and landholding records documenting Irish history, culture and society from the late 1700s to the present. In recent years, the Collection has made impressive gains in the areas of literature, art (especially the book arts), music, agricultural history, education, and economic history. Its literary collections of Samuel Beckett, William Butler Yeats, Sean O'Casey, Flann O'Brien, Frederick Green, Francis Stuart, Ethel Mannin, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill and Seamus Heaney, for example, are ranked among the best in the world. The Library also boasts significant collections on most of the major Irish writers from the late 1800s to the present, including Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, and Louis MacNeice. The special Irish Collection at Burns is complemented by the strong holdings of monographs, newspapers, journals and microforms held in the O'Neill Library, which has aimed at comprehensive coverage on Ireland since at least 1979. To promote greater awareness and use of these impressive holdings, the University in 1991 established The Burns Library Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies Chair, which is open on an annual basis to scholars who have distinguished themselves in the areas of Irish history, culture, and life. See also Named Collections.

    • Art. The strength of the Library's Irish Collection lies in its manuscript and book holdings. Nevertheless, the Collection also houses an impressive array of Irish works of art, including a permanent collection of some 50 paintings by some of Ireland's leading artists, past and present. Many of these are on display in the Irish Room, and include oils, watercolors and charcoals by such leading painters as Jack Yeats, Paul Henry, Frank McKelvey, Power O'Malley, Sean Keating, Sean O'Sullivan, Margaret Clarke, Richard King, Vincent Crotty and Ross Wilson. Paintings by John Lavery, Ann Yeats, Michael O Nuallain and Brian Ferrin are on exhibit elsewhere in the Library. Several important pieces of sculpture also beckon visitors to the Library. These include works by John Coll, Veronica Curran, Lyn Kramer, and Donal Murphy. Stained glass works by Evie Hone, Ethel Rhind and Richard King add to the visual experience at Burns. The Irish Collection also recognizes the important role played by Irish crafts in the Irish experience. Silver and crystal works of importance are to be found on exhibit in the Irish Room. Musical instruments of great beauty and historical importance, such as an early nineteenth century Egan Harp on long-term loan from Frederick Selch of New York City, round out the visual experience at Burns.

    • Book Arts. The Library has assembled a strong, representative collection of virtually all the major special presses of Ireland, including Cuala, Dolmen, Pepercannister, and Three Candles. The Yeats Collection includes an impressive number of Cuala press imprints. The Dolmen Press, founded by Liam Miller, is virtually complete, numbering more than 500 volumes, a number of these from Liam Miller's private collection.

    • Historical and Political Collections. In 1945 the University received a bequest of the Attorney John T. Hughes collection of Irish books and manuscripts, including several important eighteenth and nineteenth century Gaelic manuscripts. This collection is especially rich in historical and political materials. Since the Hughes bequest the University has pursued an aggressive collections development program with special emphasis on Irish history and politics from the late 1700s to the present. Consequently, the Library has built a strong collection of books and documents in these areas, anchored by many rare and classic titles. These include Stanihurst's De Rebus in Hibernia (Antwerp, 1584); Henry FitzSimon's The Justification and Exposition of the Divine Sacrifice of the Masse, 1611; Messingham's Florilegium Insulae Sanctorum (Paris, 1624); Walsh's A Prospect of the State of Ireland (1682); the Nicholas Fouquet copy of John Colgan's Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae (1645-1647), in two volumes, with the coat of arms of Louis XIV stamped on the title page of each volume; William O'Sheehan's 1737-1755 codex transcription of Geoffrey's Keating's Foras Feasa ar Eirinn, the first history of Ireland not in the form of annals; James Malton's View of Dublin (1799); a complete set of the printed edition of Griffith's Valuation; and a complete set of the nineteenth-century ordnance survey series on the counties of Ireland. Also of special interest is a complete set of the Irish Bulletin (1919-1922), being the mimeographed news releases of the Dail Eireann; and all four volumes of the Citizen, a Dublin magazine containing the airs composed by Henry Hudson. The Irish Collection is especially rich in political pamphlets dating from the late 1700s to the present. These include Daniel O'Connell's personal collection of 138 pamphlets bound in nine volumes dealing with the issue of the union between Great Britain and Ireland; a set of 105 bound volumes containing some 1500 late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century pamphlets, many of them extremely rare, dealing with a wide range of issues from Catholic emancipation to land reform; and the Canon Rogers Collection of documents, pamphlets and ephemera tracing the history of the Troubles from the 1916 to the 1980s. This, of course, is only a glimpse into the extraordinary resources available at Burns on Irish history, politics and life.

    • Literary Collections:

      • Samuel Beckett Collection. The Beckett Collection is comprised of three major collections plus several smaller collections and individual items. The major collections are the Calvin and Joann Israel Collection, the Barney Rosset Collection and the Alan Schneider-Samuel Beckett Collection of Correspondence. The Israel Collection was acquired in 1991 and consists of more than 400 pieces, including published French and English editions of the Nobel Laureate's writings, almost all of which were inscribed by Beckett; manuscripts; typescripts; correspondence; a notebook; photographs; playbills and miscellanea. The books include a presentation copy of the 1929 first edition of Our Exagmination Round His Fortification for Incamination of Work in Progress, which contains Beckett's first published work, an essay in homage to Joyce entitled "Dante …Bruno. Vico..Joyce;" a 1930 signed, limited first edition copy of the poem Whoroscope, Beckett's first separately published work; and a dozen variant issues of Waiting for Godot, including a presentation, limited edition copy of the first edition (Paris, 1952). The manuscripts are equally impressive. They include a half dozen holograph manuscripts, twenty-five typescripts, including an original of the 1930 poem Whoroscope, and several versions of the play Compagnie (1979-80). The manuscripts also include a fifty-page soft-cover notebook containing what Beckett scholar Skip Ascheim believes to be the first draft of "Suite," later to be published as "La fin." The journal starts in English and ends in French, establishing that "Suite" was not originally written entirely in French as previously believed. This collection was quickly followed by two other major Beckett acquisitions, the Barney Rosset Collection, consisting mostly of business records and correspondence between Beckett and his North American literary agent and the publisher of Grove Press; and the thirty-year correspondence between Beckett and Alan Schneider, the director of every North American premier of a Beckett play and a number of world premieres. The latter collection includes more than three hundred Beckett letters discussing his work with Schneider plus more than two hundred copies of Schneider's letters. This lengthy correspondence forms a fascinating exchange between playwright and director. It serves as one of the best resources available for Beckett on Beckett. This exchange has been published in a book, No Author Better Served (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), edited by former Burns Library Visiting Scholar Maurice Harmon.

      • Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill Collection. Ni Dhomhnaill (1952- ) is widely considered the finest contemporary poet writing in the Irish language. Her recent books include Cead Aighnis, Pharaoh's Daughter, and the Astrakhan Cloak. Her work has been translated by virtually every major contemporary Irish poet, opening it up to a wide and appreciative audience. The Collection includes manuscripts, poetical notebooks and notebooks on Irish folklore from which her poems have evolved, correspondence, and miscellanea. Arrangements provide for the periodic deposit of all new material, forming one of the most complete and comprehensive collections anywhere of a major Irish writer.

      • Flann O'Brien Collection. Flann O'Brien, the pen name of Brian O'Nolan or O Nuallain (1911-1966), was a novelist, short-story writer, poet, playwright, critic, and journalist. He earned critical acclaim for several novels, including At-Swim-Two-Birds, The Dalkey Archive, and The Third Policeman. He also wrote in Irish, achieving success with his novel An Beal Bocht and his long-running series of newspaper columns for the Irish Times, which he penned under the name "Myles Na Gopaleen." The O'Brien Collection includes typed manuscripts, extensive correspondence and a library of more than 400 volumes. It also contains various personal effects, among them his desk, typewriter, fiddle, school records, passports, photographs and miscellanea. The collection also includes more than a dozen works of art, including a life-size portrait of the author by his brother, Micheal O Nuallain.

      • William Butler Yeats Collection. This collection represents the largest and most important collection of Yeats' works outside the National Library of Ireland. In 1989 Brookline, Massachusetts resident and Boston radiologist Brian Leeming and his wife, June, donated their Yeats Collection, one of the finest collections of Yeats published works in private hands. The collection included many of the most prized and rare items in the Yeats' canon, including a signed copy of The Wanderings of Oisin (1889); a signed presentation copy from the publisher Clement Shorter to Maggs, the London bookseller, of Easter 1916; and an unopened copy of Is Order of R.R. & A.C. to Remain a Magical Order?. Shortly after this acquisition the Library purchased at auction the Bradley Martin copy of Yeats's Mosada, the poet's first printed book and the most prized item in the Yeats canon. Three years later the Library purchased a large collection of correspondence, poetical notebooks and manuscripts from the Yeats family in Dublin, described by the poet's son, Michael, as "the only major collection of Yeats manuscripts in existence, aside from the extensive holdings of the National Library of Ireland." This collection included some 235 letters between the poet and his sisters Lily (Susan Mary) and Lolly (Elizabeth Corbet) and his father John Butler Yeats, original poetic and prose manuscripts, diaries, journals, and notebooks. The earliest of the manuscripts include five notebooks containing a version of the dramatic poem, "Love and Death, composed in 1885 and never published. One of the most exciting manuscripts is the poetic notebook beginning in 1893, in which can be found many of the poems subsequently published in Wind among the Reeds (1899). Perhaps the most exciting manuscript, however, is the notebook containing drafts from Wanderings of Oisin (1889), Yeats's first collection of verse. The Library has continued to add to this collection, most recently acquiring a diverse collection of Yeats manuscripts, correspondence, drawings and photographs. The correspondence totals more than forty letters to Margot Ruddock (31), H.P.R. Finberg (5), George Barnes (3) and a Mr. Pyper (3), bringing the number of Yeats letters in the Burns Library to some 300. This acquisition also includes letters by other members of the Yeats family, including his wife George Yeats, his brother Jack Yeats, his father John Butler Yeats and his sisters, Lily and Lolly Yeats.

       

  • Japanese Prints (James W. Morrissey Collection). This collection consists of eighteenth and nineteenth century Japanese prints assembled by the late James W. Morrissey and presented to Boston College by his family in his memory. His brother, Dr. Arthur Morrissey, subsequently added to the collection. Artists of the Golden Age of Japanese print-making, i.e., from Moronobu's death in 1694 to the death of Hiroshige in 1858, are well represented in the collection.

  • Jesuitana Collection. (The Rev. J. Donald Monan, S.J. Collection). The Jesuitana Collection contains more than 10,000 volumes published by or about the Jesuits prior to the order's suppression in 1773. This collection documents the varied and significant contributions of Jesuits to a wide range of disciplines in the early modern period, including many rare and seminal works in the fields of mathematics, science, history, travel, philosophy and Biblical exegesis. In addition to printed books, the collection also includes original letters of St. Francis Xavier, St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Francis Borgia. A printed catalogue of this collection was published in 1986. The Jesuits were formally reinstated as a religious order in 1814, and the Library has a large collection of post-Suppression Jesuit publications as well, numbering more than 10,000 volumes, bringing the entire Jesuit Collection to more than 20,000 volumes.

  • Liturgy and Life Collection. (The Rev. William J. Leonard, S.J. Collection). This collection was established by the Boston College theologian and liturgical specialist William J. Leonard, S.J. in 1978 to document the liturgical movement in the American Catholic Church from 1925 to the introduction of the Second Vatican Council's reforms. The collection has grown exponentially to include some 30,000 volumes, and is considered to be the most comprehensive archive in America on the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church. The book collection is complemented by sizable holdings of manuscripts, pamphlets, ephemera, artifacts, and photographs. In recent years the Library has been digitizing a large representative sampling of the devotional items in the Liturgy and Life Collection to make the collection more accessible through the internet. At present there are more than 1,200 images available through the Library's web-site.

  • Named Collections. John E. E. Dalberg Acton, Aylesford Press, Balkan Studies, Banking Archives, Maurice Baring, Samuel Beckett, Hilaire Belloc, Belloc/Kingsland, Robert Hugh Benson, The Honorable Edward Boland, Bookbuilders of Boston, Brigid Boardman, British Catholic Authors, Orestes Brownson, Phillip Caraman, Wallace P. Carroll, Joyce Cary, Charitable Irish of Boston, G. K. Chesterton, Citywide Coordinating Council, James Brendan Connolly, Frederick Copleston, Christopher Dawson, Cecil Day Lewis, Enid Dinnis, Josephine A. Dolan Collection, Dolmen Press, Alfred Bruce Douglas, Theodore Dreiser, Robert F. Drinan, S.J., Eleanor Early, Eire Society of Boston, Eleanor Farjeon, Leonard Feeney S.J., Michael Field, Fine Print, Foulis Press, Pamela Frankau, Freemasonry, Eric Gill, Howard B. Gill, David Goldstein, Joseph A. Grace, Graham Greene, Seamus Heaney, The Honorable Margaret Heckler, Christopher Hollis, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Caryll Houselander, Incunabula, Irish Collection, Japanese Art, Jane Jacobs, Elizabeth Jennings, Jesuitana, David Jones, Sheila Kaye-Smith, Rita Kelleher, John F. Kennedy, Allan P. Kirby (American detective fiction), Ronald Knox, Brian and June Leeming, William J. Leonard, S.J., Shane Leslie, Peter Levi, C. S. Lewis, Robert Lowell, Robert and Patricia Lowery, Arnold Lunn, Robert McEwen, S.J., Compton MacKenzie, Philip McNiff, Mary McNiff, Ethel Mannin, C. C. Martindale, Joseph McCarthy, Vincent McNabb, Thomas Merton, Alice Meynell, Wilfrid Meynell, James and Arthur Morrissey, John B. Morton, John Henry Newman, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Nonesuch Press, Flann O'Brien, Coventry Patmore, Basil Pennington, Mary Pekarski, Pope John XXI, Rare Books, James W. Riley, Bruce Rogers, Salem Divines, Siegfried Sassoon, Brocard Sewell, Joseph Coolidge Shaw, Edith Sitwell, Osbert Sitwell, Sacheverell Sitwell, Stanbrook Abbey Press, Rex Stout, Francis Stuart, Francis Sweeney, S.J., Francis Thompson, George F. Trenholm, University Archives, Madeleine Clemence Valliot, O.P., Wilfrid Ward, Alec Waugh, Auberon Waugh, Evelyn Waugh, Dorothy Wayman, Weston School of Theology, John Wieners, Nicholas M. Williams, A. N. Wilson, Douglas Woodruff, and W. B. Yeats.

  • Nursing Archives (Mary Pekarski Memorial Nursing Archives). This archive, named in memory of the founding librarian of the nursing collections at Boston College, contains one of the finest collections of nursing records in the nation, specializing in the history of nursing and in health care ethics. It includes the papers of several leading nurse historians, including Dr. Josephine Dolan, Dean Rita P. Kelleher, Sister Madeleine Clemence Vaillot, O.P., and Dr. Margaret Colliton. It also includes the archives of the New England Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing. Complementing this collection is the recently established Pope John XXI Collection in Medical Ethics, named by its founder, medical ethicist Eugene Laforette, M.D., in memory of the only pope who was also a physician.

  • Salem Divines Collection. Consisting of some 1,400 volumes, this collection belonged to the First Church of Christ, Salem, one of the earliest Congregationalist churches in the New World. Beginning with the books donated by the Rev. John Prince, pastor of the church in the early 19th century, the library was enhanced with additions by several successive pastors of the church. Its range reflects the transition from Puritan Congregationalism to Unitarian rationalism, elucidating an important part of the history of Protestantism in Massachusetts.

  • Nicholas M. Williams Ethnological Collection. See Caribbeana

 

 

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