Special Collections

Hand-colored drawings of British antiquities made by Anglo-Saxonist and art historian John Mitchell Kemble (1807-1857). From the James Wilson Bright Collection, Goucher College Special Collections.

Goucher College's Special Collections include original primary source and rare monographs, newspapers, periodicals, and pamphlets; sheet music; personal papers; and institutional records.

Strengths include the collection of James Wilson Bright, a pioneering Johns Hopkins philologist, that includes early printed editions of English and European literary works and scholarly works relating to Anglo-Saxon literature and English philology from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Some of the most important works on Anglo-Saxon history such as the first printed collection of Anglo-Saxon laws and the first published dictionary of Old English printed in 1659 are in the Bright Collection.

The Jane Austen Collection includes all of Austen's first British and U.S. editions as well as rare editions and related books about Austen's life and times. There are thousands of titles from the English Regency period including many celebrated illustrated works by Humphry Repton and Thomas Rowlandson, and other important works from that period.

Most of the rare books collections and some of the manuscript collections may be searched in the college library's online catalog. There are also some finding aids directly on the website.

To schedule an appointment or request information about the collections, please contact the Curator of Special Collections and Archives Tara J. Olivero (410-337-6347).