Selected Special Collections
Hawaiian Imprint Collection
Hawaiian publications, nineteenth century
Among the volumes originally assigned to the Rare
Book and Special Collections Reading Room when it was established in
1927 was a group of Hawaiian publications selected from the Library's general
collections. The 353 books and pamphlets forming the Hawaiian Imprint Collection
consist largely of nineteenth-century government documents, schoolbooks,
and religious texts and include some of the earliest works printed in Oahu.
From the missionary press of Elisha Loomis, the Islands' first printer,
are copies of a sixteen-page anthology of word lists and readings in the
Hawaiian language produced in September 1822 and a four-page primer captioned
KA BE-A-BA (1824). Roger J. Trienens describes the two texts in Pioneer
Imprints from Fifty States. |