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The collection deals with some of the major themes of frontier existence including: Settlement development, Law and order, Violence, Expeditions and exploration, Relations with indigenous peoples, Trade and commerce, Death and disease, Missionaries and religion, Women’s history, Military matters, Mining, Religion, Gold rushes, Settler governance, Contested boundaries, Agriculture and livestock. Covers the dates 1650-1920.

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Spanning a wide range of historical eras, geography, and visual media, NYPL Digital Gallery offers digital images of drawings, illuminated manuscripts, maps, photographs, posters, prints, rare illustrated books, and more. Encompassing the subject strengths of the vast collections of The Library, these materials represent the applied sciences, fine and decorative arts, history, performing arts, and social sciences.
Some examples of this far-ranging content include artwork such as Goya's Disasters of War; panoramic cityscapes of New York City's Fifth Avenue; classic illustrated zoologies and botanies such as Pomona Britiannica; George Caitlin's North American Indian Portfolio; Felice Beato's photographs of Japan; reformer Thomas A. Larcom's portrait collection from Dublin's Mountjoy prison; theatrical documentation including the Theatre Guild's first performance of Porgy in 1927; decorative arts in fine pochoir prints of the same era; and rare illustrated books such as William Blake's hand-printed masterpiece of 1793, America a Prophecy.

Also included are 16th-century maps and drawings depicting the landing of European explorers in the Western Hemisphere; contemporaneous engravings of battle scenes of the American Revolution; portraits of African Americans in the mid-19th century; photographs recording the westward progress of the American transcontinental railroad; sheet music covers and restaurant menus from the 1890s; and photographs of Depression-era New York City by Lewis Hine and Berenice Abbott.

Digitized collections include: The Samuel Putnam Avery Collection of etchings and lithographs from the 19th century, by French and other European and American artists, including Edouard Manet and Gustav Courbet; The Phelps Stokes Collection of American Historical Views -- drawings, topographical views and townscapes documenting 400 years of American history; the Lawrence H. Slaughter Collection of English maps, charts, globes, books and atlases emphasizing 17th- and 18th-century English Colonial North America; the William Augustus Spencer Collection of Illustrated Books, Manuscripts and Fine Bindings focusing on medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts and on French bindings; and, the Vandamm Studio Collection photographs, recording theatre productions in New York City in the first half of the 20th century. Collection Information courtesy of NYPL