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The First White House Library
A History and Annotated Catalogue
416 pages | 15 illustrations | 7 x 10 | 2010
ISBN 978-0-271-03713-4 | cloth: $55.00
Paperback edition is not available in the U.S.
“When Abigail Fillmore moved into the White House with her husband and daughter, they made an innovation. A family of book lovers, they created a national collection for an in-home library that they left to the nation. Catherine Parisian’s exhaustive and meticulous archival work reconstructs the collection and how it was housed. While Fillmore’s rise to the presidency has been described as exemplifying the American dream, Parisian reveals the foundation of the dream to be education and family life. The Fillmores—especially Abigail—applied these values to the president’s house in the full knowledge that it is the peoples’ house. The scholarly lens of the history of the book is used to illuminate the Fillmores’ home life in Washington and, by extension, a model of middle-class domesticity for the nation.” —Caroline F. Sloat, Director of Book Publication, American Antiquarian Society
“Do not be misled by the modest title of this book or by the fact that one of our least-known presidents was behind the first White House library. This book brings together wonderful essays, starting with that by historian Sean Wilentz, and going on to others on the role of Mrs. Fillmore, the library room, the process of forming the library, and, of course, the library’s contents. The catalogue proper of this library that represented the ‘collective mind of the age’ contains mini-essays explaining how each book fit in. This is library history at its best; in other words, it’s cultural history. This splendid contribution to American history deserves to be widely available.” —Kenneth E. Carpenter, former Assistant Director for Research Resources in the Harvard University Library and the Harvard College Library
Although many early U.S. presidents were avid readers and book collectors—George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, to name a few—they usually brought their own books to the White House and removed them at the end of their terms. It was not until 1850 that Millard and Abigail Fillmore established the first official White House collection. This catalogue of the library that they assembled not only reveals much about their own preoccupations and interests and those of the age they lived in, but also provides insight into American library history, reading history, and book trade and distribution networks.
Aside from the editor, the contributors are William Allman, Elizabeth Thacker-Estrada, and Sean Wilentz.
For more information about the First Ladies Library visit www.firstladies.org.
Catherine M. Parisian is Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Mary Regula
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Millard Fillmore and His Library
Sean Wilentz
The White House Collection: The Mind of the Common Man
Catherine M. Parisian
Abigail Powers Fillmore: First Lady of the Library
Elizabeth Lorelei Thacker-Estrada
Creating a Room for the Collection
William G. Allman
Millard Fillmore and His Booksellers
Catherine M. Parisian
Bibliographical Methods
Catherine M. Parisian
Catalogue of the First White House Library
Catherine M. Parisian
Appendix A: A List of the Books Purchased for the First White House Library in 1850
Appendix B: A Subject Index of Books in the First White House Library Catalogue
Appendix C: Edward Everetts Recommendations for the First White House Library
Selected Works Cited
General Index