(1) Autograph letter signed from John G. Whittier to J.T. Fields, Amesbury, dated 12 [month illegible] 1868. Writes of books received. (2) Autograph letter signed from Annie Fields to Elsie & Boylesbore, dated Christmas 1909. Asks to accept the letter and photograph of John G. Whittier and the poem she is sending to Betty, addressed from Celia Thaxter to Whittier. (3) Autograph note from Annie Fields to Betty Beal: "A picture from Mrs. Thaxter of her garden and a poem in her handwriting to John Greenleaf Whittier. To Betty Beal from her aunt Annie Fields Christmas 1909."; (4) Watercolor of garden; (5) Autograph manuscript poem by Celia Thaxter inscribed to J.G.W., undated. First line: Old friend, new friend, in summer days gone by.

These letters of a man deeply concerned about his country, directly involved in political action, and torn, as the Civil War approached, by the conflict between his abolitionist zeal and his Quaker pacifism--letters here collected for the first time and many of them hitherto unpublished--shatter the stereotype of Whittier as "the good gray poet." The many letters to such figures as John Quincy Adams, Charles Sumner, and William Lloyd Garrison form a detailed record of the abolitionist movement from its inception to its merging with the Free Soil party in the 1850s. The first two volumes reproduce all the extant letters from 1828 to 1860, with full annotations. The last volume is selective, excluding several thousand perfunctory items and including only the historically or biographically interesting letters of the last three decades of the poet's life.