Call Number:

Ms. Coll. 617

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Extent:

0.2 linear_foot (1 box)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Horace Howard Furness autograph collection, 1757-1893, undated, Ms. Coll. 617, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1757-1893, undated (inclusive)

Creator:

Furness, Horace Howard

Form:

Autographs (manuscripts), Financial records, and Correspondence

Abstract:

This collection consists of autographs of 18th- and 19th- century notables, primarily of American and British extraction (along with three Frenchmen, a Prussian and a Piedmontese aristocrat). These figures include abolitionists, artists, clergymen, journalists, merchants, military officers, scholars, poets and politicians (among them presidents, vice-presidents, governors, cabinet members and U.S. congressmen).

Howard Furness (1833-1912) was born in Philadelphia and graduated from Harvard in 1854. He was admitted to the bar in 1859 but soon began to focus on studying and collecting Shakespearean texts. In 1871 he produced the first volume of the New Variorum Shakespeare, an edition of Romeo and Juliet. The series was designed to bring together all known information about the plays' textual variants, sources, and critical reception. Furness was a member of several scholarly societies, including the Shakespeare Society of Philadelphia, founded in 1851. He died in Wallingford, Pennsylvania in 1912.

This collection consists of autographs of 18th- and 19th- century notables, primarily of American and British extraction (along with three Frenchmen, a Prussian and a Piedmontese aristocrat). These figures include abolitionists, artists, clergymen, journalists, merchants, military officers, scholars, poets and politicians (among them presidents, vice-presidents, governors, cabinet members and U.S. congressmen). Researchers will find letters (53 items), promissory notes and bonds (11 items), poems (4 items), autographs (3 items), a state resolution and a military commission. The bulk of the items span from the time of the American revolution through the mid-19th century, although the collection extends from the earlier 18th century to the later 19th century. Two items are addressed directly to Horace Howard Furness, the collector.