Samuel Johnson archive donated to Harvard

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 19 (UPI) -- A vast collection of 18th century material relating to the life and career of lexicographer Samuel Johnson has been bequeathed to Harvard.

The gift, from the estate of Viscountess Mary Eccles, was disclosed this week by the university's Houghton Library.

Leslie A. Morris, the library's curator of manuscripts, said in an interview with the New York Times that the collection contains 5,500 manuscripts and letters between Johnson, who compiled the first dictionary of the English language, and his literary contemporaries. There are also 4,000 rare books, and 5,000 prints and drawings. Some of Johnson's personal possessions are included such as his silver teapot and a portrait of him by American artist Gilbert Stuart.

Viscountess Eccles was an American bibliophile who began acquiring the collection with her first husband, New York attorney Donald F. Hyde, who died in 1966. She married English Viscount Eccles in 1984 and died last August in Somerville, N.J., leaving the collection to Harvard. The material arrived in Cambridge last month in hundreds of boxes, already carefully cataloged, and will be available to scholars within two years, Morris said.