Welcome to The Manuscript Society

The Mission of the Manuscript Society is to encourage the collection and preservation of manuscripts and documents; to stimulate and aid collectors in their various collecting specialties; to facilitate the exchange of information and knowledge among collectors, scholars, dealers and the general public; and to promote the highest professional and ethical standards.

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Manuscript Mondays

The Manuscript Society is hosting monthly webinars on topics for collectors.  Each hour long webinar provides an opportunity to peek behind the scenes of valuations, writing & publishing, purchasing/selling, auctions and more.

Faneiul Hall in Boston, MA.

2026 Annual Meeting – Boston!

Join us in Boston for the Manuscript Society’s next Annual Meeting, taking place May 27–31, 2026. This year’s meeting coincides with Boston 250, the city’s commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.

Pictures from the Manuscript annual trip to Oxford & Cambridge.

2025 Cambridge / Oxford Trip Recap

Over several days, Manuscript Society members explored some of the cities’ most storied libraries, museums, and archives—places that hold centuries of history and some of the world’s most extraordinary manuscripts.

Latest Digest

Recent Posts

Americana is a Creed & Celluloid Paper Trail, reviews

As Bill Butts says, “It is all about education."  The educated collector is the savvy collector. Each year reference works, how-tos, exhibition catalogs, bibliographies, and memoirs useful to collectors are published. Unfortunately, they receive little attention in the media.  Bill takes the time to review 3 to 6 books in [...]

September 21, 2020|

Interview: Harold Holzer on The Presidents vs the Press

AN INTERVIEW WITH HAROLD HOLZER Harold Holzer @ Matt Capowski In 1996 Harold Holzer received the Manuscript Society Book Award for his Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President. Our award is only one among many bestowed on Mr. Holzer, which include the 2015 Gilder-Lehman Lincoln Prize and [...]

September 8, 2020|

Lincoln Letters – You Can Read Them

Library of Congress - Lincoln Letters Project Last month, the Library of Congress completed a two-year, crowdsourced project to transcribe 10,000 documents in its vast collection of Abraham Lincoln’s papers and make them legible. Now anyone can read the scribbling of correspondents. Each wrote with a variety of spelling, grammar [...]

August 12, 2020|

World War II Letters On Line

75 Years in the Making September 1945.  A call goes out.  It was from Kansas City radio broadcaster Ted Malone. Malone hosted a nationally-syndicated ABC show "Between the Bookends." He asked listeners to send in wartime correspondence. The letters would be considered for a book of war letters. The book [...]

July 7, 2020|

Douglass Scrapbooks and Papers go to Yale

Dr. Walter Evans,  a leading collector of African-American art, acquired the bulk of his Douglass collection in the 1980s from a dealer. The collection became a seedbed for Dr. Blight’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 biography “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.” And now, it has been acquired by Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book [...]

July 6, 2020|

Anti-Slavery Manuscript Project – Volunteer

At the end of the 19th century, family members and associates of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison donated a number of his letters and other documents to the Boston Public Library.  They are now in the Anti-Slavery Collection. Today, the archive has grown to include roughly 40,000 items—letters, pamphlets, books, memorabilia, [...]

July 1, 2020|

Rowan Public Library – We Salute You

From Rowan Public Library: Rowan Public Library’s Edith M. Clark History Room collections are directly benefiting from a dedicated teleworking Library Staff. They are updating and transcribing collections. This provides valuable information for all researchers. The History Room concentrates primarily on Western North Carolina genealogy and history. This includes all [...]

June 30, 2020|
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