Note on Thomas Wentworth Higginson's love of books, cited from the volume illustrated above, by Mary Thacher Higginson, p. 384:

It pleased him to find that during the year in bed he had earned more by writing than in several previous years. In April of this year (1896) he made a list of books read in the previous six months -- forty-two in all. He also noted that in seven years he had read four hundred and seventy-nine books. Giving away books was another source of pleasure, those given to different libraries during his life amounting to ten thousand volumes. He also gave to the Gray Herbarium of Harvard College his botanical notebooks which were pronounced by the professor in charge "a careful chronicle of a vegetation which for this immediate region has largely disappeared forever." His correspondence with and concerning John Brown was given to the Boston Public Library; also collections of Margaret Fuller Ossoli's and Emily Dickinson's letters.