Libraries and Archives

Sterling Memorial Library

Sterling Memorial Library is Yale’s principal library for general research and collections in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, including an extensive collection program in support of eighteenth-century studies. In addition to extensive holdings in monographs and serials, the library also provides access to key database resources, such as Electronic Enlightenment, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, the Burney Collection of 17th and 18th Century British Newspapers, Early American Imprints, and many more.

Arts Library

The Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library contains both primary and secondary sources relevant to the study of the 18th century. Catalogues raisonnés and artist monographs as well as broader explorations of art and architecture of the time period are found in the circulating collection. Arts Library Special Collections contains 18th-century imprints on art, architecture, color, and perspective.

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is one of the world’s largest libraries devoted entirely to rare books and manuscripts, and is Yale’s principal repository for literary archives, early manuscripts and rare books. The Library’s extensive textual and cartographic collections, in print and manuscript, complemented by important resources of visual media, support the study of Britain, Europe, and America in the eighteenth century.

Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (London)

Paul Mellon Centre (PMC), an affiliated institution of the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), based in London, is committed to promoting original research into the history of British art and architecture of all periods. For the eighteenth-century, its research library collections on British artists and architects, the British and Irish country house, and the eighteenth-century Grand Tour, are particularly strong. The PMC also collects the research papers of art historians, may of whom were pioneers in the study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British art.

Yale Center for British Art

The collections of the YCBA, a public art museum and research institute for the study of British art and culture, are particularly strong in the 18th century, including paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, rare books, and manuscripts. The YCBA’s Reference Library, Prints & Drawings Study Room, and Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts, all provide direct research assistance to students and scholars.

Lewis Walpole Library (Farmington, CT)

The Lewis Walpole Library is a research center for eighteenth-century studies, and an essential resource for the study of Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill. Its collections include important holdings of eighteenth-century British prints, drawings, manuscripts, rare books, paintings, and decorative arts. The Library is located in Farmington, Connecticut, in several eighteenth-century buildings, and a modern, state-of-the-art library facility, on a fourteen-acre campus. It is a department of the Yale University Library, open to researchers by appointment.

Manuscripts and Archives (Sterling Memorial Library)

Eighteenth-century sources in Manuscripts and Archives consist chiefly of correspondence, sermons, diaries, account books, business records, and printed ephemera, documenting the political, military, educational, and social activities of Yale-affiliated individuals from New Haven, Connecticut, and throughout New England.

Music Library

The Irving S. Gilmore Music Library is particularly strong in American and European music. Eighteenth-century resources include manuscript and printed music: scores and parts for instrumental and vocal music, chamber music, and larger ensembles; hymnals and tune books; and popular sheet music.

Law Library

The Rare Book Collection in the Lillian Goldman Law Library boasts the world’s most complete collection of the English jurist Sir William Blackstone, author of the single most influential book in the history of Anglo-American common law, and more generallyfeatures exceptionally strong holdings in eighteenth-century English, American, Italian, and German law.

Divinity Library

Eighteenth century resources at the Divinity School Library relate to various aspects of Christianity, including church history, theology, Biblical studies and Bible translations, hymnody, worship, and the missionary movement. Both Protestant and Catholic resources are represented, including reports of early Catholic missionaries to Asia and Latin America.

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