Customs and Fashions in Old New EnglandEarle, Alice Morse
History
Customs and Fashions in Old New England
Earle, Alice Morse
New England -- Social life and customs -- To 1775
We can also form an idea of a New England library at a somewhat earlier
date, for the list of books in Elder Brewster's library has been
preserved. They numbered four hundred. Of these books, sixty-two were in
Latin and three hundred in English. There were forty-eight folios and
one hundred and twenty-one octavos. This was quite a bulky and heavy
library for transportation to and through that new country. All were not
imported at one time, as the succession of dates shows. Brewster
purchased from time to time the best books brought out in England on
subjects which interested him, until it was really a rich exegetical
collection, and may possibly have been used as a circulating one. Nearly
all the number were religious, theological, or historical books;
fourteen were in rhyme. Among the poems were "A Turncoat of the Times,"
Spenser's "Prosopopeia," "The Scyrge of Drunkenness," a "Description of
a Good Wife," the ballad of "The Maunding Soldier," and Wither's works.
One might have been a tragedy, "Messalina," but there were no other
dramatic works.
Other benefactors of booksellers had good libraries. Parson Hooker left
behind him L300 worth of books in an estate of L1,336. Parson Wareham
had L82 worth in an estate of L1,200. Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton left, in
1717, books which made one thousand lots in an auction, for which the
first book catalogue ever compiled in New England was printed. Even by
1723 the library of Harvard College contained none of the works of
Addison, Bolingbroke, Young, Swift, Prior, Steele, Dryden, or Pope. In
1734, the catalogue of T. Cox, a prominent Boston bookseller, did not
contain the "Spectator" nor the works of Shakespeare or Milton. The
literary revival of the time of Queen Anne was evidently but little felt
in New England during its inception. The facile and constant quotation
from the ancient classics show how constantly and thoroughly the latter
were studied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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