Selected Special Collections

Oliver Wendell Holmes Library

Book and print collection of the Holmes family.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing front]. Prints and Photograph Division, The Library of Congress.

The book and print collection of Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935), received through his bequest in 1935, represents the combined libraries of several generations of the Holmes family. In addition to the hundreds of works on jurisprudence, constitutional law, philosophy, history, economics, political science, education, oriental art, science and bibliography assembled by Justice Holmes, the collection contains the books of Holmes' great-grandfather, Judge Charles Jackson; and his paternal grandfather, the Rev. Abiel Holmes, an early collector of Americana. Possibly the most outstanding feature, however, is the American literature collected by Justice Holmes' father, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), author of The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. Noteworthy representation volumes inscribed by James Russell Lowell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Ralph Waldo Emerson and rare nineteenth century publications, such as Illustrations of the Athenaeum Gallery of Paintings (1830) and the New York edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1886) bound with sheets of the suppressed English edition of the previous year. Approximately 700 volumes are in this collection.

Also see the Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Room Finding Aid.

Digitized Materials Available from the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library Collection

	A Child's Garden of Verses / By Robert Louis Stevenson; Illustrated by Charles Robinson. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895. Page Turner - PDF (52.05KB) Bibliographic Information
	Fables Choisies pour les Enfants et Illustrées Par B. de Monvel / La Fontaine. Paris: Plon-Nourrit & Cie, Imprimeurs-éditeurs, [1888]. Page Turner - PDF (11.23MB) Bibliographic Information
	Grosses bêtes & petites bêtes: [l’arche de Noé] / images et texte par André-Hellé. Paris : Tolmer & Cie, 13 quai d’Anjou, [1912] Page Turner - PDF (19.13MB) Bibliographic Information
	Vieilles Chansons pour les Petits Enfants: Avec Accompagnements / de Ch. M. Widor; Illustrations Par M.B. de Monvel. Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie, [191-]. Page Turner - PDF (16.39MB) Bibliographic Information
	A Wonder Book For Girls & Boys / By Nathaniel Hawthorne; with 60 designs By Walter Crane. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1893, c1892. Page Turner - PDF ( 82.92MB) Bibliographic Information
	The Baby's Own Aesop: Being the Fables Condensed in Rhyme, With Portable Morals Pictorially Pointed / By Walter Crane. Engraved and Printed in Colours By Edmund Evans. London; New York: George Routledge & Sons, 1887. Page Turner - PDF (24.61KB) Bibliographic Information