The next time you find yourself in Canton, Ohio, make a stop at the National First Ladies’ Library, home of the Abigail Fillmore Library Room. This room replicates the first permanent White House library, established by Millard and Abigail Fillmore in 1850. Although the library remained mostly intact for more than 50 years, just a few of the original volumes can be found in the White House today. In 2004, the National First Ladies’ Library began working with the Library of Congress and the Bibliographic Society of America to reconstruct the original Fillmore collection. The First White House Library: A History and Annotated Catalogue offers essays on how the library was founded and funded, and how it was housed, added to (and weeded), and organized over the years. The catalog portion of the book is a list of the items in the White House Library in 1850, with notes and commentary describing the books and how they reflected the literary and intellectual currents of the day.
Indexed. 398p. $55 from Pennsylvania University Press (978-0-271-03713-4)
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