Mather Family Collection
The American Antiquarian Society holds a rich collection of
American and English editions of the writings of Richard Mather of
Dorchester, Massachusetts, and of his descendants, from forgotten
Warham to never-to-be-forgotten Increase. This collection
comprises approximately 515 volumes and is preeminent among the
very strong Mather collections at the Boston Public Library, the
University of Virginia (which holds the William Gwinn Mather-Tracy
W. McGregor Collection), and the Massachusetts Historical Society.
These volumes, agreeing in name if not in quality, are segregated
from the Society's topical and chronological collections and are
shelved as a unit. (An armful of late reprints and frequently used
works, such as Cotton's "Diary," 1911, and Ronald Bosco's edition
of "Paterna," 1976, are shelved in appropriate open access
collections; their number is not included in the figure given
above.)
Access to the American editions of Mather works printed through 1840
are available
online. Foreign editions and works published in America after
1840 are listed in the General Catalog; English editions printed
before 1801 are accessible through the catalogs produced by the
Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) project as well.
The Society's holdings are incompletely listed in Wing's
Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland,
Wales, and British America...1641-1700, rev. ed. (New York, 1972-
), Evans's American Bibliography (Chicago and Worcester, 1903-
59), Shaw and Shoemaker's American Bibliography (New York, 1958-
), and, of course in Thomas J. Holmes's great bibliographies:
Increase Mather, 2 vols. (Cleveland, 1931), Cotton Mather, 3
vols. (Cambridge, 1940), and The Minor Mathers (Cambridge, 1940),
which incorporate exhaustive indexes compiled by Joseph Tuckerman
Day and George W. Robinson. These bibliographies, together with
the Society's card and online catalogs, make the corpus of Mather
writings the most diversely accessible of the Society's well-
cataloged collections.
- Keith Arbour, former Head of Readers' Services; updated by Joanne
D. Chaison, Research Librarian
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Magnalia Christi Americana (London)
Wonders of the Invisible World
For current information on the cataloging status of this and
other AAS collections, choose "Collection Access" below.
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