What, Where, Why

Houghton Library's collections trace the development of Western civilization. Materials relating to American, Continental, and English history and literature comprise the bulk of these collections and include special concentrations in printing and graphic artspoetry, and theatre

We are located in the yard between Lamont and Widener Libraries.

Accessing the Collections

Houghton Library is open Monday, Friday, Saturday 9am-5pm and Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 9am-7pm.

  • Current Harvard students must register online for a Special Collections Request Account and present a valid Harvard ID to the lobby guard and the Reading Room desk staff upon entrance.

  • Materials in Houghton are non-circulating and must be used in the library's reading room. The collection is "closed stacks," which means that you can't browse the library shelves. Staff will retrieve items for you.

  • Many items are held off-site at the Harvard Depository; always check the HOLLIS+ record for location information. HD items are typically available one business day after ordering. 

  • Digital cameras can be used to photograph materials, but check with the reference staff first.

Search Tips

Our Houghton Library: A Student's Guide has extensive searching tips for finding different types of material in Houghton.

if you need more assistance, Houghton reference staff are happy to help in person in the Houghton Reading Room or via email. Houghton liaisons for your class are James Capobianco and Heather Cole.

Collection Highlights

Relevant Collections

Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women. Newton Branch Committee records
The Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women was formed on May 21, 1895 to "increase public interest in the great question of the extension of Suffrage to women, and to stimulate public opinion in opposition to it." This group was also known as Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to Women and later known as Women’s Anti-Suffrage Association of Massachusetts.

Margaret Sanger papers  and the American Birth Control League records
Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. in 1916 in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York, and founded the American Birth Control League in 1921. Sanger wrote books on contraception, overpopulation, marriage, and sex instruction, organized international conferences, published two monthly papers, and worked on birth control legislation.

The ABCL records include material on the business of ABCL office, including the following: doctors, medical societies and general public in search of information on birth control; lecture engagements and travel plans; organizing branch offices; organizing conferences relating to birth control, eugenics, genetics and population; financial matters; efforts to change laws on various state and federal levels; mailing lists of supporters and doctors; requests for financial support; clippings and some printed materials; drafts of articles and conference papers; form letters; itineraries; notes; press releases; reports; and statistics. There is a manuscript journal (possibly by Dorothy Bocker) recording interviews with major social agencies in New York City.

Science Fiction collection
Comprising over 3,000 volumes, the Science Fiction Collection consists largely of twentieth-century trade paperbacks, magazines, fanzines, and prozines. Some of the material in this collection is very fragile; the Hollis record will include a restriction note if the item cannot be used.

The collection includes first editions of many popular science fiction novels, including Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness.

Santo Domingo Collection
This collection is the world’s largest private collection of material documenting altered states of mind. The bulk of the collection explores drug use by individuals and the influence such use and users had on their society, with emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries in America and France. Material documenting mid-20th-century popular culture, and the counterculture, in America and France is extensive. Long runs of “pulp” fiction, including crime novels, science fiction, mass-market paperbacks, erotica, and underground and mainstream comics show how the drug culture began to permeate national cultures. There are also approximately 2,000 film posters and stills, largely documenting drug-related films and psychedelic “happenings.”

Individual items of Interest

Musée des dames et des demoiselles, ca. 1825. Call number: *FC8.A100.825m
Each book in this dainty six-volume set covers a different area of science appropriate for ladies: fruit, flowers, minerals, butterflies, insects, and birds; works like these encouraged women to explore the natural world.

Amusement in the zoological gardens. Game, ca. 1830s. Call number: *44W-2322
"A game for the instruction of youth." 

Marianne Dwight Orvis watercolors of wild flowers, 1846. Call number: MS Am 2625.
Orvis created this album while a resident in the experimental utopian community Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Mass.

How to read character: a new illustrated hand-book of phrenology and physiognomy..., 1875. Call number: *AC85.Aℓ191.Zz875w
Little Women author Louisa May Alcott received a phrenological reading in 1875, at the age of 43; her results were recorded in this book.

Observations on the necessity of betrothment. London, 1838. Call number: EC85 L2404 826c (no. 26)
Subtitled "or the internal, mental, marriage, previous to wedlock, or the external, animal, marriage : illustrated by arguments and diagrams, drawn from the science of phrenology." Explanation of sex differences as illustrated by phrenology. Included in a volumes of pamphlets bound together and owned by Charles Lane, co-founder (with Bronson Alcott) of the utopian community, Fruitlands. Also available digitally.

Womens' rights "1981" : and what came of it. [London?, ca. 1881]. Call number:  EB85.A100.881w
Satirical suffragette handkerchief. Borders of handkerchief have captioned illustrations of women in positions of power, including scientists, athletes, admirals, commanders in chief, lawyers, and chief justices; men are conversely shown in traditional women’s roles, such as laundering, cleaning, serving dinner, and taking care of babies; the four corners have men in positions of idleness.

Temple of Flora. London: 1807. Call Number: Typ 805.07.8335
Final part of R. Thornton's sumptuous work New illustration of the sexual system of Carolus von Linnaeus. Known especially for the colored plates of flowers.