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Winslow Homer was born in Boston in 1836, the second of three sons of Henrietta Benson and Charles Savage Homer. His father, a hardware importer, and his mother, an amateur watercolorist, encouraged his early interest in art. Homer had to piece together his artistic training as no art schools... more

During the early twentieth century, the library at the Moses Brown School (formerly the Friends Boarding School) became an informal repository for Quaker manuscripts reflecting the history and work of the Society of Friends. Most of these materials were later transferred for custody to the... more

In 1818, the Essex Agricultural Society was officially granted a charter on June 12th of that year. The goal of the fledgling Society, formed by a group of "practical farmers" who first met on February 16, 1818, was "to promote and improve the agricultural interests of farmers and others in... more

In the late 1890s, the family of William Lloyd Garrison, along with others closely involved in the anti-slavery movement, presented Boston Public Library with a major gathering of correspondence, documents, and other original material relating to the abolitionist cause from 1832 until after the... more

After serving as a drummer boy for the Union Army during the Civil War, Edwin Hale Lincoln (1848-1938) worked as both a commercial and amateur photographer throughout his long career. Associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, Lincoln began his career in the mid-1870s, identifying himself as... more

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1823-1911, was an abolitionist, author, Civil War colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, and Unitarian minister from Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1841, and went on to study theology at Harvard Divinity School. Higginson became... more

Includes Carleton Watkins photographs of Yosemite Valley, Eadward Muybridge's nine panel panorama of San Francisco from California Hill, 1877, Alexander Gardner's photographs from Across the Continent on the Kansas Pacific Railroad, Timothy O'Sullivan's and William Bell's photographs for the War... more

Color lithographed Victorian-era trade cards were a key late-19th century advertising vehicle for national manufacturers and local businesses. These miniature posters, about the size of a postcard, were handed out as souvenirs at major expositions during the late Victorian period. They were... more

The carte de visite, also known as a CDV, was a photographic format first produced in the 1850s, which became wildly popular in the 1860s. It consisted of a small photographic print (typically an albumen print) mounted on card stock measuring approximately 2 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches. The cards were... more

Boston Public Library’s Louis Prang & Company collection includes more than 1,500 chromolithographs, dozens of sample books of greeting cards, and related documents produced by the firm between its establishment in Boston in 1860 and its merger with the Taber Art Company in 1897. Acquired... more