In many New England libraries and collections may be seen specimens of colonial printing and binding; the library of the American Antiquarian Society is particularly rich in such ancient treasures. Some of the books from Cotton Mather's library may there be found, that library which Dunton called the glory of New England, and which he said was the largest privately owned collection of books that he had ever seen; but many of them were burned in the sacking of Boston by the British. It consisted of over seven thousand printed volumes and many manuscripts, and its estimated value was £8,000. The majority of these volumes was naturally upon divinity.
We can also form an idea of a New England library at a somewhat earlier date, for the list of books in Elder Brewster's library has been preserved. They numbered four hundred. Of these books, sixty-two were in Latin and three hundred in English. There were forty-eight folios and one hundred and twenty-one octavos. This was quite a bulky and heavy library for transportation to and through that new country. All were not imported at one time, as the succession of dates shows. Brewster purchased from time to time the best books brought out in England on subjects which interested him, until it was really a rich exegetical collection, and may possibly have been used as a circulating one. Nearly all the number were religious, theological, or historical books; fourteen were in rhyme. Among the poems were "A Turncoat of the Times," Spenser's "Prosopopeia," "The Scyrge of Drunkenness," a "Description of a Good Wife," the ballad of "The Maunding Soldier," and Wither's works. One might have been a tragedy, "Messalina," but there were no other dramatic works.
Other benefactors of booksellers had good libraries. Parson Hooker left behind him £300 worth of books in an estate of £1,336. Parson Wareham had £82 worth in an estate of £1,200. Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton left, in 1717, books which made one thousand lots in an auction, for which the first book catalogue ever compiled in New England was printed. Even by 1723 the library of Harvard College contained none of the works of Addison, Bolingbroke, Young, Swift, Prior, Steele, Dryden, or Pope. In 1734, the catalogue of T. Cox, a prominent Boston bookseller, did not contain the "Spectator" nor the works of Shakespeare or Milton. The literary revival of the time of Queen Anne was evidently but little felt in New England during its inception. The facile and constant quotation from the ancient classics show how constantly and thoroughly the latter were studied.