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The
BCHS Baltimore Book Collection
The
aim of the Baltimore City Historical Society’s
BALTIMORE BOOK COLLECTION is to assemble in one place
copies of every book ever published about Baltimore.
What
is a Baltimore book and why does the Baltimore City
Historical Society want it?
A
Baltimore book is a book about Baltimore or by a Baltimore
author.
Baltimore history in all of its many categories, biography,
fiction and poetry, art, architecture, and music,
memoirs and reminiscences, guidebooks, journals, and
pamphlets are all welcome at the Baltimore City Historical
Society’s BALTIMORE BOOK COLLECTION.
Writers
as famous and as varied as Edgar Allan Poe, John
Pendleton Kennedy, Frederick Douglass, H. L. Mencken,
Upton Sinclair, James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, John
Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Anne Tyler
have called Baltimore home at one time or another. Fitzgerald
wrote Tender is the Night here; Mencken published
Fitzgerald’s first short story in The Smart
Set. And so on.
The
Baltimore City Historical Society wants to put the books
of these authors and the works of the many other writers
who lived here and wrote about it together in one place.
The
distinction of the BALTIMORE BOOK COLLECTION from the
major collections of books on Baltimore at the Maryland
Historical Society and the Enoch Pratt Free Library
will be its environment. Having all of the histories
of Baltimore, for example, or all of the titles of a
single Baltimore author gathered in the same place will
itself be illuminating and will create a critical mass
to inspire future literary endeavors and scholarship.
The
idea for the BALTIMORE BOOK COLLECTION came from John
Carroll Byrnes, founder and first president of
the Baltimore City Historical Society, who donated
his own collection of Baltimore books to start it
off. The BALTIMORE BOOK COLLECTION now consists of
some 250 book titles as well as periodicals, and is
growing.
The
collection is presently housed at the Baltimore City
Historical Society’s office at the Maryland Historical
Society. It is cataloged and arranged, but not yet
available for public use—we hope that it will
be shortly.
In
the meantime, contributions are welcome. Most of the
books in the current BALTIMORE BOOK COLLECTION are
contemporary, so gifts of 19th century classics of
local history, important periodicals, neighborhood
histories, and Baltimore City Directories would be
especially welcome.
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Donations
of individual books can be mailed to:
Baltimore
City Historical Society
c/o Maryland Historical Society
201 W. Monument St.
Baltimore, MD 21201
The
Baltimore City Historical Society can also appraise
and pick up book collections. Call 410-685-3750,
ext. 379.
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