Guide to the E. Millicent Sowerby Collection, 1901-1979

Emily Millicent Sowerby was born in Beverley, East Yorkshire, England on September 7, 1883. She received several degrees through Girton College, Cambridge, focusing on medieval and modern languages. A rare book cataloguer, Sowerby worked for several firms in London before moving to the U.S. in 1923 to continue her career. In 1942 Sowerby was appointed the bibliographer for the Thomas Jefferson Collection at the Library of Congress. There she prepared a reconstructed catalogue of the books that Thomas Jefferson sold to the United States in 1815 that had largely been lost due to fire and relocation. The collection is five volumes and took from 1942 until 1959 to complete, with the first volume published in 1952. Sowerby retired to Muncie, Indiana where she died in 1977 at the age of ninety-four. This collection contains published and unpublished books and pamphlets, correspondence, articles and other written materials, speeches, diplomas and photographs pertaining to the life and work of E. Millicent Sowerby. The bulk of the material is from the early 1930s to mid-1950s