Reader, Writer, and Revolutionary: John Adams and his Library

FAIN: LP-50006-06

Boston Public Library (Boston, MA 02116-2813)
Deirdre Brennan (Project Director: September 2005 to September 2007)

Planning of a traveling panel exhibition, adapted from a gallery exhibition at Boston's Copley Square Library, about John Adams' library and how his personal reading informed his political views.

The Boston Public Library (BPL) requests funding from the NEH to plan a traveling facsimile-panel exhibition entitled Reader, Writer, and Revolutionary: John Adams and His Library, to be adapted from a 2006 gallery exhibition at the BPL-Copley Square. This exhibition will investigate the second president’s development as a lifelong book collector, avid reader, and commentator on the ideas and debates of the revolutionary period and will demonstrate to a national audience how the intellectual content and historical context of Adams’ reading reflected and informed his intellectual and political views.