American Antiquarian Society

This digital collection of over 200 graphic arts items dating from 1720 to 1843 represents a traditionally out of scope area of the Society’s major collections, but it remains a rich resource for those studying the cultural capital of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While the advent of American caricatures and cartoons is found with Paul Revere, William Charles and the comic popularity of David Claypoole Johnston, this collection traces the source of such artists to the Transatlantic world.

Digital collection of 550 drawings in graphite, pen, ink and wash, chalk, watercolor and charcoal. The collection ranges from the late 1700s to the early 20th century.

David Claypoole Johnston (1799-1865) is a noted cartoonist and humorist. This inventory consists of 28 boxes of material dating from 1799 through the early 20th century.

This digital collection consists of 65 British and American satirical prints published between 1796 and 1807. 

This digital collection provides access to the color plates inside lithographer Julius Bien’s rare edition of Audubon’s Birds of America, published in 1860 in New York.  The Bien volume was produced entirely in America, unlike the famous 1838 engraved edition, which was printed in Scotland and England by W.H. Lizars and Robert Havell.

Full of romance and adventure, dime novels were a variety of melodramatic fiction that was popular in the United States from about 1860 until the early 1900s.  Published as cheap paperbacks (most cost only ten cents), they were generally regarded as low-quality fiction. Women, more often than not, were major characters in these novels. This exhibition explores these women.

A look at women's work, from before the American Revolution through the Industrial Revolution, using selected images from the Society's collection.

This online exhibition explores the connections between American and French lithography in the early days of this printing technology.

Online exhibition showing an array of Christmas images from the Society's collections. 

This exhibition focuses on the traditions and myths of Valentine's Day by examining handmade and commercially produced love tokens from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, held at the American Antiquarian Society. From the intimate appeal of reading a beloved’s handwriting to the sheer delight of quickly sending and receiving anonymous messages through the mail, the celebration of what was originally a minor saint’s day connected lovers, friends, and enemies both close and far.