Rare Books
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Visual Materials
One wooden desk with a paper scroll, the top of which reads: "The Chautauqua Combination Drawing Board and Writing Desk". The patent date is October 20, 1885, copyright 1895. This is a folding desk that was designed for use in the home, particularly for home-schooled children. It is comprised of a wooden frame, a folding writing surface painted black, and a paper scroll across the top. The first lesson on the scroll is the alphabet. When folded shut, the desk is below the paper scroll. The writing surface, which measures 20 1/2 in. W x 16 1/2 in. H, lifts up to reveal four compartments for storing paper, chalk and other materials. The dimensions provided below are for the whole desk, folded.
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Manuscripts
There are 631 manuscripts, 525 of which are by Caroline Severance. These include speeches, poetry, essays, articles, notebooks, commonplace books, miscellaneous notes, and a 347-page unpublished autobiography by Caroline Severance entitled "Own Story." The majority of the 10,634 pieces of correspondence is made up of family letters; only 232 letters are written by Caroline Severance. The rest of the correspondence is made up of letters written to Caroline Severance by over 1,700 different authors. The collection contains 9,007 pieces of ephemera, which is made up of address books, appointment books, brochures, business papers, greeting cards, legal documents, newspaper clippings, postcards, fliers, brochures, programs, notebooks, photographs, and financial papers of the family. The manuscripts, correspondence, and ephemera cover the following subjects: African American women suffrage and clubs, Susan B. Anthony, Jessie Benton Frémont, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Julia Ward Howe, child labor reform, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Fröbel and the Kindergarten movement, Charles Fletcher Lummis and the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, Helen Modjeska, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, dress reform, suffrage, temperance, Unitarianism, women's rights, women's clubs, and the history, politics and social life of 19th and 20th century Los Angeles, California.
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