James Bradley Thayer scrapooks

The scrapbooks of James Bradley Thayer contain a wide variety of newspaper clippings, articles and pamphlets on topics ranging from constitutional law and studies of legal cases to the construction of the Shaw Memorial in downtown Boston and John Ruskin's theories on aesthetics. Thayer himself organized clippings into broad thematic groups, such as constitutional law, evidence and miscellany (which includes information on cultural and artistic matters, as well as social events). Some clippings are annotated and cross-referenced with other materials in other volumes. Most clippings were collected and pasted down into the scrapbooks close to the time they were first published and read -- for instance, Volume 2 of the scrapbooks contains clippings roughly in chronological order from 1882 to 1890. However, the scrapbooks also contain older materials that Thayer came across well after their publication date, in the case of articles from the 1810s, in some of the volumes. Please note that date ranges given below are approximate, as many clippings are not dated.

Most of the volumes still bear Thayer's assigned titles, except in the cases of 2, 6 and 8, where deterioration of the binding has meant the loss of Thayer's handwritten labels.