Nantucket Collection

The Atheneum has a large collection of materials about Nantucket Island, including books, pamphlets, newspapers, logbooks, letters and even an historic collection of books that were read by our patrons over 100 years ago. We actively collect new publications as well as out of print items.

Nantucket Titles
With over 700 titles and growing, from de Crevecour's 1782 description of the Island in Letters from an American Farmer to Nat Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, we strive to maintain the best collection of printed material about the island and its inhabitants.

Historic Newspapers
Our collection of Nantucket newspapers dates back to 1816, the year of the publication of The Nantucket Gazette and continues today with Nantucket's weekly newspaper the Inquirer and Mirror. Thirty-six of the newspapers existed in the interim. We preserve original copies of these papers, and have all of them available on microfilm for use in the Atheneum.

Manuscript Collection
The Atheneum has a small but important collection of ship's logs, journals, letters and other documents relating to Nantucket. Look for our manuscript database online soon!

Atheneum Historic Collection
The original Atheneum building and collection of books and museum objects burned in the Great Fire of 1846. Only a few books out in circulation at the time survived. On the second floor of the Atheneum in the Great Hall you can see and read a selection of the books that were on the Nantucket Atheneum shelves in the nineteenth century. Catalogs of the library's holding published in 1841, 1883, and 1900 helped us sample this fascinating library that nourished the intellect of our isolated community in the last half of the nineteenth century.