Wordsworth Collection
About this collection
This digital collection contains 446 items from the Cornell Wordsworth Collection, including manuscripts and books from a variety of authors.
Historical context
The Cornell Wordsworth Collection offers nearly comprehensive book holdings on Wordsworth, Coleridge, and related authors. The collection also includes letters, manuscripts, broadsides, pictures, documents, and objects by, to, belonging to, or about Wordsworth and his family. The collection preserves all editions of his published works, along with many books that once belonged to Wordsworth’s own library.
The Cornell Wordsworth Collection had its beginning in the St. John Wordsworth Collection, which was acquired in 1925 and represents forty years of collecting by Mrs. Cynthia Morgan St. John of Ithaca, New York. Mrs. St. John built on broad foundations, seeking any anthology that contained some of Wordsworth’s poems, any volume that contained even a few significant comments on the poet, any that contained a tribute or parody of him, any book of near or remote association, any work on the English Lake Country, and any work by or about Coleridge or members of his family. Since 1925, Cornell has added steadily to St. John's thousand or so books and manuscripts.
Using the collection
For more information about using this collection, please contact the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at rareref@cornell.edu.
More information
- Collection steward
- Katherine Reagan, Ernest Stern Curator, Rare Books & Manuscripts
- Metadata creation
- Cornell University Library
- Credits
- This collection overview was last reviewed in 2025.
- Collection sources