The books in the Alice’s collection range from very early examples of printing (including a Bible from 1526) to novels by now-forgotten authors of the early 20th century. Many of these volumes were originally part of Alice and William Miner’s personal library at Heart’s Delight Farm—Shakespeare, Thackeray, Scott, Eliot, and other classic authors are represented. You will also find books on art, history, and travel, as well as a large selection of 19th-century textbooks and didactic literature for children.

Alice was also a collector of books and manuscripts of significance to the study of early American history, including a first English edition of Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1787) and Lewis and Clark’s three-volume account of their Travels to the Source of the Missouri River, and Across the American Continent to the Pacific Ocean (1817 edition). Among the manuscripts are letters written by Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Zebulon Pike, as well as those by American poets John Greenleaf Whittier and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Image at top: Books from the library at Heart’s Delight Cottage