The First Century of the John Carter Brown Library. A History with a Guide to the Collections

the second Nicholas Brown, the Providence merchant whose benevolence to the discouraged Rhode Island College in 1804 resulted in the change of name of that institution to Brown University.After their graduation from college in 1816 and 1811 respectively, the two young men began col- lecting books in the approved fashion of their day, making occasional purchases in the fields dear to the early nine- teenth-century amateur, acquiring fine copies of the Greek and Latin classics, Bibles notable for their monumental typography, sumptuous editions of celebrated works of literature, volumes boasting extra-wide margins and "embellished" with copperplate illustrations, and various other productions of the sort that filled the dreams of the old-style collector, the Dibdinian bibliomaniac.Now and then one or the other of the brothers bought a book or pamphlet of American interest, but before 1840 neither of them could be regarded as a specialist collector of Americana.In 1846 Nicholas Brown went to Rome as United States consul- general, detaching

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