Boston Antiquarians

Abstract

This chapter discusses the mania for collecting old books and manuscripts relating to the New World. It argues that it was a feature of the emergent historical consciousness sweeping the country in the 1840s in America. The chapter also elaborates on the Massachusetts Historical Society's Club, a hub of antiquarian activity at the midcentury, noting that the rage for collecting old books from and about America was the fastest-growing sector of the bibliomania. The chapter recounts that one of the old Puritans who rested at the society was Hezekiah Usher, the first printer in the British colonies. The most famous book Usher printed was the Bay Psalm Book, the Psalter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which had iconic status among collectors as the first book printed in British America. The chapter underlines that the old books like the Bay Psalm Book were more than mere textual chronicles of the past. They were actual participants in it and thus, like other historical witnesses, needed to be examined and cross-examined. The chapter concludes by investigating how a bibliography consequently became an essential skill in the thriving new field of American antiquarianism.