Welcome to Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, where students, faculty, and scholars can have first hand access to authentic historical materials and texts. Our collections are rich sources for the study of literature, women's studies, the art and history of the book, travel and exploration, and Bryn Mawr College itself.

      Literature

The library has strong collections of first and early editions of the works of major writers in English, from the First Folio of Shakespeare and the first printing of Milton's Paradise Lost, to original printings of the major British and American writers of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Also included are early editions of Rousseau, Voltaire, and other French writers, and first editions of 20th century Latin American writers. We also hold papers, letters and manuscripts of 19th and 20th century writers: Katherine Sergeant White, long-time editor of the New Yorker, British poet Ralph Hodgson; papers and drawings of British illustrator Claud Lovat Fraser, Christina Rossetti, Laurence Housman, A.E. Housman, Marianne Moore, John Keats and other British and American writers.

      Women's Studies

The Women's Studies Collection is particularly rich in works on the legal and social status of women from the 15th century to the early 20th century and the works of European and American women writers. We also have the papers of M. Carey Thomas, both as president of Bryn Mawr and as a leader in the women's rights movement, suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt (including her photo albums), suffrage activist Susan Fitzgerald; 19th-century feminist and writer Caroline Healey Dall, diaries and letters of Red Cross workers Anna V.S. Mitchell and Dorothy North Haskins in Russia and Europe during and after World War I, letters of Margaret Bailey Speer, Dean of the Women's College of Yenching University in Peking, and the records of the Philadelphia Club of Advertising Women.

      Bryn Mawr College

The Bryn Mawr College Archives serves as a research and security repository for the official administrative and historical records of the College, the professional and personal papers of faculty, administrators, and alumnae, and unique or ephemeral items reflecting other aspects of the history of the College. Holdings include the College Presidents' papers; College and student publication; minutes of faculty, trustee, and student organizations; reports, programs, and calendars; student notebooks, diaries, scrapbooks, and correspondence; biographical files for deceased alumnae; blue-prints, legal documents, and posters. There is also a small group of artifacts, e.g., lanterns, gym uniforms, and class seals. A substantial photograph collection, numbering some 6,500 prints of which one-fifth date from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, includes group and individual portraits as well as photographs of buildings, classes, sports, May Day festivities, and other College events.

     History, Travel, & Exploration

The library contains extensive holdings on European engagement with Latin America, Asia, and Africa, from the printed accounts of some of the earliest explorations in the late 15th century to administrative and promotional publications of European colonies in the 20th century. Particular strengths include the British in India and European colonization of Africa. We also have large collections of books on the cities of London and Paris from the sixteenth century to the present, including surveys, guidebooks, and books on architecture and life in the cities, as well as 18th and 19th century guidebooks for other European cities.

Our history collection includes both personal and political documents: the diary of Joseph Bean, written during the Great Awakening of 1740-42; letters of John Quincy Adams to the American charge d'affaires in Russia during the negotiation of the Peace of Ghent; papers of polar explorer Henry Grier Bryant; letters of Clara Edwards written from Persia in the early 1900s; diaries of American neurologist Andrew Henry Woods, including his diaries kept while in China in the early 20th century; and papers of Spanish political writer Joaquin Maurin, including accounts of his life in Franco's prisons. The Archives provides rich primary source materials for the education of women over the last 125 years.

     Art of the Book

Bryn Mawr holds one of the country's largest collections of 15th century printed books, and is particularly strong in printed classical and humanist texts from the 15th and 16th centuries. Illustrated books, fine press books, and bookbinding constitute important parts of the collection. Our illustrated books include both printed and manuscript 15th century books of hours, emblem books from the 16th to 18th centuries, and botanical and bird books from the 16th to 19th centuries. The Fine Press Collection includes works issued by the Kelmscott Press, Ashendene, Bird & Bull, Doves, Gehenna, and Mosher. The binding collection contains numerous examples of American and British signed bindings, and original bindings dating as far back as the 15th century.

       Digital Collections

Many of our collections are incredibly rich graphically. We are building a series of digital collections to highlight and share these collections, which include the Castle Collection of Natural History Illustrations, the Catt Collection of Suffrage Photographs, the Early Advertising Collection, and Theater Photography from the Theresa Helburn Collection. These collections are part of Triptych, a digital initiative of the Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore College Libraries. Two of our manuscripts are also available in their entirety in digital form: MS16, an early 16th century Italian treatise on the gods and commentary on Virgil's Aeneid; and MS 21, the Castle Hours number 3, which is part of the University of Pennsylvania's Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text & Image database.

       Art

We are fortunate to have both original works of art of many periods and documentary sources for the study of some modern artists. Our manuscripts collections includes journals and letters of American lithographers Bolton Brown and Albert Winslow Barker; papers of Susan Macdowell Eakins and Thomas and Susan Eakins' photographs; papers of sculptors Rudolph Evans and Anne Truitt; papers of Henrietta Cozens (a member of the Violet Oakley - E. S. Green - Jessie Wilcox Smith art circle); a large collection of drawings by the American illustrator and cartoonist Wyncie King; and the papers of Philadelphia artist Ben Wolf.

The College's Collections, housed in Thomas Library, include collections illustrating the history of photography from shortly after its invention in 1839 to the present, Asian Art, European and American 19th, and early to mid-20th century paintings, sculpture (including reproductions and casts of classical and medieval objects), the Asian, African and Pacific Collections, a prints and drawings collection, and archeological and anthropolgical study collections.

Seymour Adelman Book Collector's Prize

The Bryn Mawr College Library is proud to sponsor the annual Seymour Adelman Book Collector's Prize, open to all undergraduates. More information about the prize...

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Last Update: April 12, 2007