Rare Book Monthly
The Making of a Cape Cod Library
William Sturgis establishes the library, October 20, 1863.
Purchased along with this essential British naval reference was the American Practical Navigator by Nathaniel Bowditch. The very rare Civil War edition of 1865 acquired by Sturgis would now be worth over $3,000, if one could find a copy at all. Sadly only a contemporary version of the book is still owned by the Library. Sturgis, however, still has the Naval Biographical Dictionary in its maritime collection.
Librarians are always being pulled between the Scylla and Charybdis of maintaining current versions of their books (buying for information) vs. maintaining ageing volumes that might have historical content that is not of current interest, given limited shelf space. Who among the trustees would know that the 1865 Bowditch or Colton’s Atlas would become desirable collectibles by the year 2004?
The Library’s 10th choice was a curious one: out of all the books available on the planet, the Trustees selected Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, with An Historical Essay, by Lorenzo Sabine. Sabine interviewed loyalists who had fled to Canada and compiled a group of fascinating and poignant sketches. One would have to wonder why this particular volume was chosen — as the tenth book in the entire library — and before the work of any American patriot.
Books 11 through 26 were, perhaps, the Trustees’ first attempt to address the needs of young people, and were a return to Americana. Washington Irving’s Works were purchased, followed by Pierre Irving’s Life and Letters of Washington Irving, a combination biography of the author by his nephew and a collection of his letters. This book represented Sturgis Library’s first selected work of literary biography.
With the next two choices, I get the feeling that the Trustees were again becoming adventurous and feeding more personal reading desires. Francis Parkman’s Pioneers of France in the New World was the 28th book added to the library, followed by Epes Sargent’s Arctic Adventures by Sea and Land from the Earliest Day to the Last Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin.
Emboldened by their purchases in Canadian and Arctic exploration, the trustees, I imagine, snuck in a now seemingly odd but probably popular selection for number 30: The Memoir of Rev. Sydney Smith. Smith was British, a popular preacher and moral philosopher, who openly attacked the Protestant bigotry of his day. Smith was the first, but not the only socially aware writer that would be chosen for the new library.
The next choices reflect “serious” library acquisitions; I would like to imagine that one of the local ladies took these gentlemen in hand and demanded something for themselves. The library purchased, in rapid succession, a 7-volume set of the works of Thackeray, 7 volumes of Emerson, the poetical works of Whittier, Longfellow, Tennyson and — here’s why I think a woman was behind this — book number 49, Adelaide Proctor — followed by Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell.
