Houghton Library Bookplate Collection

Overview

The bookplate collection at Houghton Library comprises over 20,000 individual plates from book collectors and libraries all over the world.

The core of the collection is that of Daniel Butler Fearing, whose collection of over 11,500 books and nearly 4,000 bookplates on angling themes came to the library in 1915. The bookplate collection is organized roughly by subject, using categories created by Fearing and by Harvard librarians.

Images of bookplates in the collection can be viewed on Flickr. Within each category, bookplates are sorted alphabetically by collector surname. Information collected on each bookplate includes the artist, collector’s country of origin, size of the plate, and prominent pictorial characteristics (e.g. “penguin”, “tree,” “ship”.)

A detailed list of bookplates in the Houghton collection can be obtained by contacting the library.

Subject List

Categories not linked to Flickr have been cataloged in HOLLIS, but are not yet digitized.

Fearing Bookplates

• Angling
• Fish Armorial
• Watercraft
• Mentioned in Moule’s Heraldry of Fish
• Ichthyc
• Punning

Harvard Bookplates

• Harvard Men
• Harvard general
• Harvard College
• Harvard University
• Harvard Libraries
• Harvard Library Bookplates (proofs)

Library Bookplates

• College libraries
• College libraries, foreign
• Special libraries
• Public libraries
• Public libraries, foreign

Special Artists

Bookplates in this category were designed by prominent artists, are visually striking, or did not cleanly fit into another category when those categories were created.