Title page of scrapbook with Harvard University Library bookplate

This bookplate indicates that the scrapbook was donated to the library by Edward L. Pierce in June 1893; it is not known who assembled the scrapbook, although it was presumanly either Pierce or the younger Sumner.

An abridgment of what I extracted while an undergraduate at Harvard College, 1766-1769

The bound volume contains excerpts copied by Benjamin Wadsworth from books he read as a student at Harvard in the late 1760s. The volume includes almost no personal commentary on the readings. The excerpts are arranged by year of study for the academic years 1766-1769, beginning when Wadsworth was a sophomore. Each entry begins with a title indicating the book title and author for the passage, and there is an alphabetical index at the end of the volume. Wadsworth selected “extracts” from both religious and secular texts including several histories of England, American histories (with a focus on Puritans), the Bible, and in his senior year, “the Koran of Mohammed.” He also read several books on the art of speech and the art of preaching. There are few science texts included, though the final five-page entry is titled, “What I thought fit to note down from Mr. Winthrop’s experimental Lectures” and contains notes both on the content of Professor John Winthrop’s lectures as well as the types of experiments being performed in class. Wadsworth’s commonplace book offers a window on the state of higher education in the eighteenth century and offers a firsthand account of academic life at Harvard College.

Aruz-i Endelusi şerhi

[ʻAbd al-Muḥsin al-Qayṣarī].

Teşrifat-i kadime

Esat Efendi.

Kitāb Fuṣūl al-badāʼiʻ fī uṣūl al-sharāʼiʻ

muʻallifuhu Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ḥamzah ibn Muḥammad al-Fanārī.

Tarih-i Timur Gürgan

li-Nazmizade Efendi.

Kitāb-i Khulāṣat al-ḥikmat

az taʼlīfāt-i Muḥammad Ḥusayn Khān.

Mecmua-yı münşeat-i Feridun Bey

Caption title.

Lughat-i Turkī

Faḍl Allāh Khān.

Memalik-i Osmaniye-ye mahsus coǧrafya-yi askeri

eser-i Ahmet Cemal.

Farhang-i Shuʻūrī va al-musammāh bi-Navāl al-fuz̤alā va lisān al-ʻAjam

[Hasan Şuuri].

Münşeat-i Rıfat Efendi

Each section has separate caption title.

Majmūʻah-ʼi chahār risālah

az taṣānif-i Khvājah Muḥammadī al-matakhaliṣ bih Dard.

al- Nūr al-sāṭiʻ wa-al-burhān al-qāṭiʻ

Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Ḥasan Ẓāfir.

Safarńāmah-ʼi Gharavī

[Muḥammad Rafīʻ ibn ʻAlī Aṣghar al-Ṭabāṭabāʼī].