The Susan Jaffe Tane Collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson & Henry David Thoreau
September 27 – December 23, 2022
The Athenæum recently received the most significant addition to its Special Collections in over a century. This extraordinary gift, from the world-renowned Susan Jaffe Tane Collection of 19th-Century American Authors, contains books, essays, poetry, and letters by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) stand as majestic pillars of the transcendentalist movement of the mid-nineteenth century.
Highlights of this extraordinary collection include:
- a first edition of Thoreau’s Walden (1854)
- a first edition of Emerson’s Essays (1841) owned by Providence poet Sarah Helen Whitman
- an inscription by Emerson to Thoreau in Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution (1838)
- autographed manuscripts of Thoreau’s poem “Inspiration” (1841) & essay “Ktaadn” (1840s)
- letters by Emerson to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Frank Sanborn, & James Munroe
View a collection guide PDF here.
