Entries by Ann McShane

Belles Lettres at the Library Company

In the early years, the Library Company acquired works of literature through purchases from London booksellers made by agents on our behalf or through gifts. The 1741 catalog, published on our tenth anniversary, listed a set of Montaigne’s Essays (London 1685), which came into the collection as a gift from Benjamin Franklin; James Thomson’s The […]

Treasures from the Library Company of Philadelphia

The minutes of the Library Company Board of Directors meeting of April 4, 1886, relate that “a communication was received from Mr. John A. McAllister offering to give the company a collection of illustrations and printed matter relating to the civil war, which he said cost him the labor of twenty years and more than […]

Treasures from the Library Company of Philadelphia

During the years of the Civil War–with money scarce, prices high, and many of the Library Company’s members in the army–it took all of Librarian Lloyd Pearsall Smith’s ingenuity to maintain the currency of book purchases. Dictated by the reading habits of members, these were increasingly dominated by novels from such once-popular, but now almost […]

Treasures from the Library Company of Philadelphia

In 1774, Thomas Jefferson drafted a set of instructions for a Virginia delegation to an extralegal congress of the representatives of other colonies.  Taken ill, Jefferson did not accompany the delegation to Williamsburg.  His document had not been intended for publication, but in his absence, and without his knowledge, his friends took the manuscript to […]

Treasures from the Library Company of Philadelphia

One of the most popular poets in colonial America, Phillis Wheatley became the first person of African descent to publish in America. The enslaved Wheatley earned international fame for an elegy for George Whitefield, the renowned Methodist minister of the Great Awakening, whom she had seen preach in Boston shortly before his death in 1770. […]

Treasures from the Library Company of Philadelphia

By the time he died in 1751, James Logan—who came to Pennsylvania as William Penn’s secretary in 1699 and went on to occupy many of the highest political and judicial offices of the province—had assembled the best collection of books in colonial America. Logan was a book collector all his life—as well as a linguist […]

Treasures from the Library Company of Philadelphia

Women, want to know if you are fertile?  Here’s what Aristotle prescribes.  “Make a fumigation of red storax, myrhh, cassiawood, nutmeg, cinnamon, and letting her receive the fume into her womb, covering her very close. If the odor passeth through the body up into the mouth and nostrils, she is fruitful.” Aristotle’s Masterpiece was the […]

Treasures from the Library Company of Philadelphia

How many people realize that the stirring preamble to the Constitution, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…,” was a late emendation?  Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia during the long, hot summer of 1787 submitted to their fellows various plans for the governance of the […]

Treasures from the Library Company of Philadelphia

Eighteenth-century antiquarian Pierre Eugène Du Simitière (ca. 1736-1784) collected all manner of material, including sketches, pamphlets, broadsides, political cartoons, and other “combustibles,” such as embossed tax stamp paper, with an eye to the future. The aspiring historian foresaw the importance in saving the much-derided piece of ephemera from the Stamp Act crisis of 1765 as […]

Discover the Library Company’s Art & Artifacts Collection

The South East Prospect of the City of Philadelphia is one the Library Company’s treasures; this view of the Delaware Riverfront of Philadelphia is the oldest surviving painting of a North American city. Philadelphia is shown as bustling and mercantile, with a river full of ships. A key at the bottom of the painting numbers […]

Treasures at the Library Company of Philadelphia

As we enter the final two months of the seemingly endless presidential election season, politics is on nearly everyone’s mind. Political visuals, whether appearing as newspaper cartoons, television commercials, or part of our social media, play a role in shaping the national dialogue about issues facing the electorate. Our 18th-century forbears also recognized the power […]

Treasures at the Library Company of Philadelphia

During the winter of 1777-78, the American army starved and froze at Valley Forge, while the British enjoyed the comparative comforts of city quarters in Philadelphia.  By spring the do-nothing policy of General Sir William Howe brought about his recall and the withdrawal of his troops. On the eve of Howe’s departure, his officers staged […]

Treasures at the Library Company of Philadelphia

In 1731, Philadelphia was North America’s most important city. It was also the canvas for many of the young Benjamin Franklin’s inspirations for voluntary association and civic betterment. Soon after arriving in Philadelphia, Franklin had organized the Junto, a group of like-minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their […]