John Hay Library

The special collections library of Brown University, the John Hay Library contains more than 3,000,000 items. Holdings range from Babylonian clay tablets and Egyptian papyri to current-day books, manuscripts, and ephemera. Among the more unexpected items are portraits and paintings by old masters, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s tea set, Napoleon’s death mask, 6,000 toy soldiers, the last daguerrotype taken of Poe, and Whitman’s personal copy of Leaves of Grass. Other notable holdings include the papers and archival materials of Henry David Thoreau, George Orwell, William Blake, and H. G. Wells.