Hyde Collection Catablog

As amazing as the Hyde Collection’s books are, the manuscripts in the collection are just as spectacular. I asked my colleague, Rick Stattler, to contribute some information on searching the very detailed finding aids he’s created for the manuscript collections.

“Catablog readers may be interested to know that the manuscripts in the Hyde Collection are also being cataloged, in addition to the fine work being done on the books. To see catalog records for the Hyde manuscripts, go to the HOLLIS catalog. Browse for “MS Hyde” under “other call number,” and links to several dozen catalog records from the collection will be displayed.

Detailed finding aids for much of the collection can be viewed easily at OASIS (Online Archival Search Information System), which provides centralized access to thousands of Harvard’s finding aids for archival and manuscript collections. To look at the records for the Hyde Collection, you can enter “MS Hyde” in the Quick Search box at the top of the screen As of this writing, eighteen findings aids are on OASIS.  The finding aids on OASIS include most of the highlights of the manuscript collection, such as:

* The Samuel Johnson Letters ( MS Hyde 1), including 746 letters and fragments, comprising almost half of the known surviving letters in his hand.

* An extra-illustrated set of the 1887 edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson (MS Hyde 76), expanded to thirty-one massive volumes by the insertion of more than five thousand prints and manuscripts.

* The Hester Lynch Piozzi Manuscripts (MS Hyde 35), containing thirty-two items by Johnson’s friend and confidant, many of them still unpublished.

Thirty additional finding aids are still awaiting evulgation (see “John’s Favorite Words” below), but everything should be accessible by the end of the year.

Sincerely,
Rick Stattler
Project Manuscript Cataloger”