Leaves of an Hour

Developing Literary and Popular Culture Collections
at Brown University Library

Today, literary and popular culture collections at Brown University Library are very extensive, and are key components of the Library's research strengths. Centered in the Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays, they encompass vast holdings of popular music, comics and graphic novels, broadsides, popular and genre fiction, science fiction and fantasy, true crime, film and television scripts, magic and magicana, theatrical ephemera, wit and humor, and pamphlet literature of every description, to name only the largest groups of material.


It will be the purpose of this exhibition to document how Brown University Library developed its literary and popular culture collections over the course of two and a half centuries, and to demonstrate how that acquired affinity for collecting in areas outside the traditional definition of literature has informed collection building throughout Special Collections.

1754-1793 Early Literary Collections: The Williams Table & the 1973 Catalog	1793-1826 Early 19th Century Collections: The 1826 Catalog	1826-1848 Mid 19th Century Collections: Charles Coffin Jewett & the Catalogue of 1843	1850-1884 The Harris Collection: The Original Collectors
1848-1893 The Harris Collection & Late 19th Century Literary Collecting	1893-1930 The Harris Collection: Harry Lyman Koopman	1930-1965 The Harris Collection: S. Foster Damon	1964-2001 Contemporary Collecting: Building on the Past
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Illustration: Walt Whitman; frontispiece to Leaves of Grass (Brooklyn, 1855)