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Rare Books

Rare Book Division
Firestone Library
One Washington Road
Princeton, NJ 08540
609-258-3184
Curator of Rare Books
609-258-9942

Laurence Hutton Collection. 
Location designator: HTN

"The Hutton Memorial Collection, consisting of 801 books, together with autographed portraits, paintings, etc., from the library of the late Laurence Hutton, A.M. This collection was left by Mr. Hutton to trustees to be put in some safe place for a permanent memorial and was presented by them to the University." - Catalogue of Princeton University (1913), p. 290. This is the earliest mention of the collection in the Catalogue of the University. Evidently it took about nine years for the Hutton trustees to resolve disposition of the collection. According to Hutton's will, the trustees were Junius S. Morgan, George Allison Armour, Stephen Palmer (president of N.J. Zinc), and Moses Taylor Pyne. 

There are many autographed and inscribed books from his wide acquaintance in the worlds of literature, art and theatre from about 1863 to 1904. A record of the many inscribed volumes in the collection has been made by the Huttons themselves in the following privately printed volume: M.E. Wood, compiler. Laurence and Eleanor Hutton. Their Books of Association. (New York, 1905) [(HTN) 0513.49.4]. [full text] More than 10 volumes have presentation inscriptions from Thomas Bailey Aldrich (q.v.). Many volumes have been extra-illustrated by Hutton.

Though the Hutton collection consists largely of 19th-century literary works, there are also large groups of books concerning theatre, history, printing, and art history.

See also the published thesis by Gail Herndon Lawrence. The literary career of Laurence Hutton (Indiana: Univ. of Notre Dame, 1980).