Exhibition & Reception at the Providence Athenaeum


Wednesday, December 14 at 6:00 pm
251 Benefit Street, Providence

A special viewing of new acquisitions, featuring the Susan Jaffe Tane Collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and additional items acquired during the past few years.

Highlights include:

  • Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution (1838), inscribed by Emerson to Thoreau
  • Autographed manuscripts of Thoreau’s poem “Inspiration” and essay “Ktaadn”
  • Emerson’s Essays (1841), owned by Sarah Helen Whitman
  • William Faden’s Topographical Chart of the Bay of Narragansett (1777)
  • Miniature facsimile Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1896) by Robert Burns
  • Letters from the 15th Century: On the Origins of the Kelmscott Chaucer Typeface (2020)
  • Selection of first editions by poet, Paul Lawrence Dunbar

Guests will be treated to a tour of the building and a visit of the recently renovated Art Room on the 3rd level.