Video Fridays: Carolyn Wells in the Library
Credit: NYPL Digital Collections
Frontispiece by Frances Rogers for Carolyn Wells’ first mystery, The Clue (1909).
Last weekend, I gave a Zoom presentation to the Florida Bibliophile Society about my new research project: librarian, author, and book collector Carolyn Wells (c. 1862-1942). Her mystery novels — she wrote 80 of them, plus another 90 books, give or take — are most intriguing to me, but I also discussed her Walt Whitman collection, now at the Library of Congress.
![Mr. William Shakespear's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Published according to the true Original Copies. Unto which is added, SEVEN PLAYS, Never before Printed in Folio (London: Printed [by Robert Roberts, Robert Everingham, and John Macock] for H[enry]. Herringman, and are to be sold by Joseph Knight and Francis Saunders, at the Anchor in the Lower Walk of the New Exchange, 1685). Sold for $140,800](/sites/default/files/styles/category_card/public/media-images/2026-05/shakespeare.jpg?itok=La5syD9Y)
