John Hancock's personal library

This is a list of John Hancock's personal library upon his death. Hancock was a strong supporter of education. He donated over 1,000 books to Harvard's library and endowed a professorship of languages and Hebrew there. As governor, Hancock supported legislation requiring all towns with more than 200 people to provide a teacher of Latin and Greek for their students and towns with less than that to have a teacher proficient in English. Hancock could afford the best books money could by and his library is larger than the typical home library of the day.

Learn more about John Hancock at our John Hancock Facts page.

John Hancock
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John Hancock's Personal Library

Postlethwaite's Dictionary of Trade and Commerce; 2 vols., folio
Dart's History and Antiquities of the Abbey Church of St. Peter's; 2 vols., folio
Chamber's Dictionary: 2 vols., folio
Willard's Divinity; folio
Flavel's Works; folio
Bacon's Philosophy
Hollis's Memoirs; quarto
Prussian Evolutions
Carter's Epictetus
Newton's Milton; 3 vols.
Role's Conduct
Universal History; 51 vols.
Memoirs of Marlborough
Magdalen Charities
Hanway's Reflections on Life and Religion
Varro's Husbandry
Locke on the Understanding
Beccaria on Crimes
Annals of the Netherlands
Constitution of the United States
Zimmerman on Pride
Dickinson's Political Essays
Cato's Letters; 4 vols
Field's Engineer
Adams's Defence of the Constitution; 3 vols.
Ramsay's History of the United States
Belknap's New Hampshire
Erkhard's Gazetteer, or the Newsman's interpreter
Nature Displayed, or Spectacle de la Nature; 7 vols.
Salmon's Short View
Clarendon's Rebellion
British Registers
Whitelock's Historical Memoirs
Age of Louis XIV
British Customs
England's Reformation
Horneck's Great Law of Consideration
Hervey's Meditations
Chauncy's Thoughts on Religion
Virgil
Horace and Tully
Estimate of Manners
Greek Homer
Caesar and Juvenal
Tattler and Guardian
Shakespeare and Spectator
Female Spectator
Pamela
Mahew's Sermons
Sir Charles Grandison
Faith and Practice; 2 vols
Collin's Rambler
Gay
Tom Jones
Pope
Dryden
Glover's Leonidas
Robertson's Scotland
Military Instructor
Essay on Slavery
Journal of Congress
Emily Montague
Bibles in various languages
Whole Duty of Man
Archbishop Sharpe's Sermons and Discourses; 7 vols.
Watts's Works
Massachusetts Constitution
Adam's Defence, in Dutch
Ladies Library; 3 vols.
Irwin's Tracts
Boyer's French Dictionary
Sim's Military Guide
Historical Dictionary
Hewett's Fables
Memoirs of the Plague in London
Mathematical works in French, Latin, Greek, and Dutch