American Antiquarian Society

The American Antiquarian Society is a natural home for an online exhibition about James Fenimore Cooper's works. For many years the Society has supported The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper, an editorial project the bears the seal of the MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions. To support the work of the editors of the Writings, also knows as the Cooper Edition, the Society has actively collected editions of Cooper's works printed in any language up to the year 1877.

With over 800 images and 300 mini-essays, this site offers a unique and comprehensive view of the broadsides that Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831) collected in early nineteenth-century Boston. Each broadside includes a brief explanation of its content by Kate Van Winkle Keller.

An Invitation to Dance: A History of Social Dance in America showcases the unique print culture items on the subject of dance within the Society's holdings. From its fashion and origins, to its etiquette and opposition, this online exhibit features a sampling of artifacts from the 18th and 19th centuries. Click on the image to the left from Stephen Salisbury's "Bal Masque" ticket to attend.

In the early days of the American Antiquarian Society, founder Isaiah Thomas asked members to send materials for preservation in the Society's library at Worcester, Massachusetts. Over the course of two hundred years, generations of the Society's members, friends, and staff have ably answered Thomas's call. This exhibition celebrates the generosity and farsightedness of some of the many collectors, book dealers, and librarians who have, each in his or her own way, contributed to the greatness of AAS.

Some of the earliest and rarest materials printed in British North America were not printed in English. Instead, these books, pamphlets, and broadsides were printed in the various dialects of Algonquian, the language of the Native Americans who populated the American Northeast. This exhibition explores the contributions of those who labored in translating and printing works in the Algonquian family of native languages.

This exhibition highlights the Society's outstanding collection of lithographs, watercolors, and drawings of artist David Claypoole Johnston.

In 2015, the William C. Cook Jacksonian Era Collection arrived at AAS adding almost five hundred books, prints, manuscripts, newspapers, and more to the Society's already significant holdings from or about the Jacksonian Era. This online exhibition follows the books from that collection through the process of being integrated into the Society's other library collections in order to reveal the everyday work of collection-building being done by AAS members, staff, friends, and researchers.

The Caribbeana Project at the American Antiquarian Society features some of the major works about the Caribbean or published in the Caribbean that can be found in AAS's collections. These include letters, manuscripts, almanacs, laws, newspapers and bound volumes of all kinds. While not a comprehensive accounting of AAS's Caribbeana holdings, this exhibition examines and emphasizes the close relationship between early British North America or the United States and the Caribbean World in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

This online exhibition features lithographs, chromolithographs, trade catalogues, trade cards, and product labels from the American Antiquarian Society's collection that help shed light on major changes in the way Americans in the North produced and sold their food in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Drawing on the American Antiquarian Society’s unparalleled collection of prints and books, the exhibition, Beyond Midnight: Paul Revere, will transform viewers’ understanding of the iconic colonial patriot. This in-depth examination of Revere’s many skills as a craftsman will help illustrate the entrepreneurial spirit of an early American artisan who stood at the intersection of social, economic, and political life during the formation of the new nation.