United States of America collection

Introduction

We hold one of the richest collections of American printed books and manuscripts outside of the United States, covering all humanities and social sciences disciplines. Since 1846 the Library (formerly part of the British Museum) actively collected ‘books of all kinds’ from America, and by 1867 the Librarian of Congress determined that the ‘most complete collection of books relating to America in the world is that now gathered on the shelves of the British Museum’.

We continue to acquire – via purchase, donation and legal deposit – a very extensive range of books, manuscripts and periodicals from the United States to support research and innovation in a wide range of subject areas.

Among the highlights of our American collections are some of the earliest works published in the country as well as:  

• Rare early documents of European colonial expansion 
• Rare or unique texts documenting early European interactions with Indigenous communities as well as historic (and contemporary) texts in Native American languages
• Excellent holdings of both early and contemporary literature, including copies of first and variant editions of literary works, American literary magazines, artists' books, publications from small and experimental presses, and US comics and zines
• Extensive runs of periodicals, serials, newspapers and magazines
• Government or official publications.

Early Americana

The foundation collections of the British Museum – including the manuscripts of the antiquarian Sir Robert Cotton, the collections of the physician and slave owner Sir Hans Sloane, the collections of Robert and Edward Harley, the Old Royal Library donated by King George II, and the King's Library of George III – all contain important collections of early Americana.

They contain accounts of early voyages and exploration alongside texts on encounters with Indigenous communities and competing colonial powers and include: 

• A map of the East Coast of America, drawn by court astronomer John Dee for Queen Elizabeth I 
• A manuscript history of travel to Virginia by William Strachey containing an early English-Powhatan dictionary 
• Early issues of The New-England Courant, one of the first American newspapers, founded in Boston in 1721 .

The Library’s rich collection of papers and correspondence relevant to colonial and Revolutionary America includes those of Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (the Blenheim Papers); William Petty, Marquess of Lansdowne (Lansdowne Papers); William Eden, Baron Auckland (Auckland Papers); the Earls of Hardwicke (Hardwicke Papers); and John Clarkson (Clarkson Papers). For more on the manuscript holdings of the British Library relating to America see:

• C. M. Andrews and F. G. Davenport, Guide to the Manuscript Materials for the History of the United States to 1783, in the British Museum, in Minor London Archives, and in the Libraries of Oxford and Cambridge (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1908) 
• Grace Gardner Griffin, A Guide to Manuscripts Relating to American History in British Depositories (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1946) 
• William J. Koenig and S. L. Mayer, European Manuscript Sources of the American Revolution (London: Bowker, 1974).

Important early printed books include a first edition of the text known as Mourt’s Relation (1622) – an early account of the Plymouth Colony with a description of the first Thanksgiving; William Penn’s The Frame of Government (1682), an early constitution for the new colony of Pennsylvania; and A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain (1725), a rare pamphlet anonymously authored and printed by Benjamin Franklin whilst a compositor in London. 

For more information on our printed holdings of Americana , please see:

• Gregory Palmer, A Guide to Americana: The American Collections in the British Library (London: K G Saur, c.1988)
• R. C. Simmons, British Imprints Relating to North America 1621-1760: An Annotated Checklist (London: The British Library, 1996).

Maps

The Library holds extensive map collections containing important maps of America. Collections include early maps of North America both in manuscript and print created by imperial explorers and early settlers.

Maps include depictions of Manhattan made by Robert Holmes in 1664 when the territory came under English control and the first map printed in English America by William Hubbard and John Forster in 1677.

We also hold extensive collections of charts and maps illustrating the voyages and surveys of Captain James Cook which include maps of Hawaii and the west coast of America. 

Serials, periodicals, magazines and zines

We hold a vast and varied collection of American periodicals, journals, magazines and zines in hard copy, microfilm and digital form. These range from high circulation national publications such as Life, New Yorker and Time to academic journals and periodicals, to little magazines often printed by hand for a very limited audience. Included in the collection are:

• The Crisis, published by the NAACP 
• The Dial, the Transcendentalist journal of the 1840s 
• Massachusetts Magazine, which published America’s first short stories
• Ms., founded by Gloria Steinem 
• Funny Aminals (1972), which includes an early print iteration of Art Spiegelman’s Pullitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus (1991).

Newspapers

The Library offers access to hundreds of US newspapers, in hardcopy, on microfilm and online. We hold early colonial newspapers such as the New England Courant and Pennsylvania Chronicle.

Many titles are included in databases such as Early American Newspapers, the Burney Collection Newspapers, African-American Newspapers, and Newsbank Access World News while others, including The New York Times, are available digitally as stand-alone titles.

19th century, 20th century and beyond 

In addition to the foundation collections, our North American collection has been built through donations and the regular selective purchase of current publications, the legal deposit of materials published in the USA and distributed in the UK, and the purchase of antiquarian and secondhand books to fill gaps in the collection.  

• Holdings are particularly strong in history, literature and cultural studies 
• Titles published in French, Spanish or Indigenous languages are actively collected in parallel with English-language material 
• Contemporary fine and small-press printing is well represented, with artists' books and material from fine press publishers like Arion Press, The Perishable Press and Moving Parts Press, present in the collection
• Especially noteworthy are rare and limited editions of works by Walt Whitman including his self-published The Leaves of Grass (1855), a printed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) signed by Abraham Lincoln, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1901) – an important early work of American feminist literature and highly original work of horror fiction.

Official publications 

The Library has a large collection of US government publications acquired through international exchange and purchase. Though by no means complete, the Library holds material dating from the colonial era and birth of the United States with Federal government material dating from the late-18th century and States material from the late-17th century.

The bulk of official publications are in printed format, however holdings include microform copies and, with the advent of electronic publishing, increasingly digital formats often available online.

Sound Archive 

The British Library Sound Archive holds important recordings relating to the literature, culture, history, and wildlife of America. It holds rare recordings on wax cylinders of Indigenous languages and music, field recordings of early American folk music, classical and popular music by famous artists, and readings by prominent Americans.

Recorded literary holdings include strong collections of US spoken word record labels, such as Caedmon and Spoken Arts, and many unique unpublished recordings of US poets and writers performing live such as Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg.

Natural history content includes field recordings of songs and calls of animals, the earliest North American identification guides and the famous Songs of the Humpback Whale LP that helped save the species from extinction.

Philatelic collections 

The Library’s Philatelic Collections hold important stamps relating to American history and culture including significant holdings of iconic postage, revenue, air mail, poster stamps and philatelic literature. Philatelic Collections hold the revenue stamps introduced as part of the 1765 Stamp Act, a USA 1918 ‘Inverted Jenny’, and an array of stamp designs and commemorative postage stamps issued across the United States. 

Indigenous Language Materials 

In addition to contemporary writing by Native American authors, we have significant holdings of historic materials relevant to the study of the Indigenous languages of North America.

As already mentioned, this includes recordings and manuscripts alongside printed items. It is estimated that the Library holds some 380 pre-20th-century books and pamphlets entirely or largely written in Indigenous languages, including early printed dictionaries and linguistic studies. Holdings include historic works in many Native North American languages including Algonquian (mostly Massachusett, Lenape, Cree, Ojibwe) and Iroquoian (Mohawk, Cherokee).

Finding these works can be challenging as the catalogue records are often brief, use only the form of language name given in the book itself, and may contain no subject indexing. For this reason, it may be appropriate to search the Library's catalogues against other bibliographic resources.