University of Akron (Cummings Center for the History of Psychology)

The University of Akron’s Archives of the History of American Psychology (AHAP) houses approximately 50,000 rare and antiquarian volumes relating to the history of philosophy and psychology. Using grant funds, AHAP will provide conservation treatment to two important, rare books that require immediate care. They include an 1860 edition of Charles Darwin’s revolutionary On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life and Catherine Esther Beecher’s 1831 The Elements of Mental and Moral Philosophy, Founded Upon Experience, Reason, and the Bible. Beecher’s work, the first psychological treatise written by an American woman, was never officially published or sold and is extremely rare with only fifteen copies known to exist.