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.

John Hancock's Personal Library

John Hancock
  • 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

Learn more about John Hancock at our John Hancock Facts page


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