Book Lovers Record Traces of 19th-Century Readers

An annotated copy of an 1891 edition of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poems and ballads that belonged to Jane Chapman Slaughter.

A lament for a dead child, written by her mother in pencil on the endpaper of an 1843 copy of The Poetical Works of Mrs. Felicia Hemans. A sewing needle, thread still attached, inserted in the back of an 1860 edition of The Letters of Hannah More to Zachary Macauley. Bittersweet annotations in an 1891 copy of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Ballads and Other Poems (left), ...