Bookplates collection

The collection contains more than twenty thousand bookplates, a few bookplate sale catalogs, brochures, leaflets, and correspondence with dealers and collectors by Harold Goddard Rugg. The collection began in 1928, when Josiah Minot Fowler, DC Class of 1900, donated the F.J. Libbie collection of bookplates to Dartmouth College. He also commissioned two brass plates dedicating his gift to the memory of his parents George R. Fowler and Isabel Minot Fowler. Fowler’s gift contained about 3,900 early American plates, 3,000 modern American plates, 250 American proofs, 300 Canadian plates and about 7,500 English and foreign plates. Each plate was mounted on white cards, arranged alphabetically and stamped with Fowlers name.

In 1945, Arthur F. Gray and Arthur H. Gray, DC Class of 1911, donated their collection of bookplates which contained about 8,000 plates. That donation was facilitated by Bremer Whidden Pond, DC Class of 1906. Each of the plates were mounted on gray cards and stamped with Gray’s name and interfiled with the existing Fowler collection.

Since 1945 other bookplates have been added to the collection, including donations by Dr. Mary Adams in 1969, and by Harold G. Rugg, who also solicited additional bookplates from donors and bought many from dealers.

The original alphabetical arrangement of the collection has been maintained and has been supplemented by arrangement according to bookplate designer, collector, country of origin and subject.

Previously identified notables have been listed by name. They include George Washington, Paul Revere, Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Charlie Chaplin, Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Waldo Emerson, Queen Victoria, Isabella Stewart Gardiner, Alexander Hamilton, Victor Hugo, Jack London and Daniel Webster.