Melville's Print Collection

Melville adopted his father’s habit of collecting engravings of art works, and he added to the family collection throughout his life. The collection of some 425 items was dispersed after Melville and his wife Elizabeth Shaw Melville died. The largest cache of 300 or so prints is located at the Berkshire Athenaeum, and MEL stores digital images of them in OCHRE. The images from Melville’s art print collection on view here are from the Osborne Collection at Southwestern (TX) University and the Reese Collection of the Melville Society Archive at the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Research Library.