To “Revive Their Spirit”:
Collecting Books and Shaping Archives in Nineteenth-Century New England

When the Congregational Library Association formed in 1853, its members aimed to collect and preserve the Congregational story in print, a testimony to the denomination’s rich past and a bulwark against future irrelevancy. In their founding statement, the association communicated their belief that the library would serve not only as a storehouse of wisdom from the founders but would also “revive their spirit.”

A belief in this revitalizing power of collecting and preserving books in libraries and archives swept through New England in the first half of the nineteenth century, and this talk provides a broader survey of the people, methods, and philosophies that informed antiquarian practices in the early United States and built collections like the “Founding 56."

This program was part of the CLA's Founding 56 Lecture Series, which accompanied our 2023 digital exhibition, Founding 56: The Congregational Library's Original Collection.

SPEAKER BIO

Dr. Lindsay DiCuirci is Associate Professor of English at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she teaches early American literature and the history of the book. She is the author of the Penn Press book Colonial Revivals: The Nineteenth-Century Lives of Early American Books (2019), which was awarded prizes from the Bibliographical Society of America, the Library Company of Philadelphia and the journal Early American Literature. Her work can be found in Archive Journal, Early American Literature, Reception, and a variety of edited collections. She also writes about book history, pedagogy, and working with students in archives. Currently, she is conducting research for a new book on the print cultures of nineteenth-century spiritualism.