American Antiquarian Society

Since Isaiah Thomas’s research for his ambitious The History of Printing in America (1810), the Society has held the largest set of data on the early printing trade in what is now the United States. Starting in 1927, Avis Clarke, AAS’s first trained cataloger, compiled a card catalog that came to be known as the Printers’ File during her 43 year tenure here. For many decades, these twenty-five drawers of cards could only be accessed in our reading room, a resource that became known as the Printers’ File.

The Journals of Edmund Quincy Sewall Jr., 1837-1840

Thoreau scholars have long been aware of the journal kept in Concord, Massachusetts during a period of seven weeks in 1840 when twelve-year-old Edmund Quincy Junior was attending John and Henry David Thoreau’s Concord Academy and boarding in the Thoreau household.

Digital collection of the Proceedings is available for new series volumes 1 (December 1880) through 118 (October 2008). This journal has been a source for AAS members' obituaries, articles, bibliographies, and tools for scholarship within the general area of American history and culture through 1876. The Proceedings ceased publication with volume 118, part 2, dated October 2008.

This is a collaborative project between the Center for Popular Music and the American Antiquarian Society to inventory, catalog, digitize, and provide web-based public access to their extensive music manuscripts collections. It concerns manuscripts inscribed before 1910 that are mainly American in provenance, with contents that are preponderantly vernacular in style.

Scholarly transcriptions of African American literature, with basic editing and apparatus.  

Just Teach One provides scholarly transcriptions of early texts, with basic editing and apparatus.  

Over 200 digitized letters written by Abigail Adams (1744-1818) , the wife of John Adams (1735-1826), the second president of the United States.

The inventory listed in this site consists of 29 boxes and 8 oversized folders of material dating from the late 18th through the early 20th centuries with the bulk of the collection falling between 1870 and 1890.