About Language & Literature

Cushing Library is home to a diverse array of literary collections, both in the form of printed books and archival manuscripts. Among the many highlights are materials related to Walt Whitman, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Edward Thomas, and many more. The Library is also home to a significant collection of Early Modern English literature (John Donne, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and their contemporaries) as well as one of the broadest and most important collections in the country, The Eduardo Urbina Cervantes Project Collection, related to Miguel de Cervantes and Don Quixote . 

A cornerstone of our holdings related to Language & Literature are the printed and archival materials contained in the J. Lawrence Mitchell Collection. Among the many riches to be found in this diverse and expansive collection are those related to lexicography and the history of the English language; 20th century Anglophone literature, including extensive holdings related to the Garnett family and the Bloomsbury Group, the Powys Family, Katherine Mansfield, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Rhys Davies, and many more; as well as examples of fine printing and resources related to bibliography and book collecting. Also of interest is the Mitchell Boxing Collection, one of the most significant collections of literature and ephemera related to “boxiana” ever to be amassed.

The Colonial Mexican Collection consists of books, manuscripts, and single sheets from the 16th Century to the late 19th Century, and offers scholars a unique opportunity to study Mexico’s cultural, historical, literary, and religious past. Many of the items in this collection are rarely, if ever, seen in their original format. The content of this collection appeals to researchers from different disciplines, including scholars interested in the study of history, religion, literature, politics, art and architecture, history of the book, linguistics, and other topics relating to life in, and the history of, New Spain and, by extension, the "New World." 

The Robert L. Dawson French Collection represents a rich repository of primary material for the study of the long eighteenth century and its influence on European culture generally. The collection consists of over 15,000 printed titles and 5,000 manuscripts, both the work of the great names of the period and of forgotten figures who wrote less familiar work, much of it ephemeral. 

In addition to these collections, Cushing Library is home to the Nicholas A. Basbanes Collection, which contains the author’s archives, as well as a significant collection of Twentieth-Century literature, children’s literature, and pop-up books. 

Curator: Anton duPlessis duplessis@tamu.edu (Colonial Mexican Collection).