THE main bibliographical sources for this study pertain to the Jesuit missions, as follows:—
Le Père Auguste Carayon: Bibliographie historique de la Compagnie de Jésus, ... depuis leur Origine jusqu’à nos jours, Paris, 1864, 4º.
Henry Harrisse: Notes sur la Nouvelle France, 1545-1700, Paris, 1872. He says, no. 49, that no library (1870-71) has a complete set of the Jesuit Relations; and adds that, including those of 1616 and 1627, a full set consists of fifty-four volumes, nine of which are second editions, and one a Latin translation. He had inspected all but one.
E. B. O’Callaghan: a catalogue raisonnée (1632-1672), in the N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1847, p. 140, also printed separately. Field (Indian Bibliography, no. 1,146), in noticing this essay, says that Dr. O’Callaghan enumerates only forty titles, of which the Carter-Brown Collection had thirty-six; Harvard College, thirty-five; Henry C. Murphy, twenty-nine. “Of the forty-eight now [1873] known to exist, Mr. Murphy has secured all but three.” Dr. O’Callaghan at that time named twenty libraries, public and private, in the United States which had sets more or less imperfect. The volumes of some years were not very scarce, those of 1648-1649 and 1653-1654 being known in ten copies in these libraries, while there were at that time no copies at all of the years 1655 and 1659; and these, marked by titles varying from the usual form, are still the rarest of the series.
The O’Callaghan pamphlet was reissued at Montreal in 1850 in a French translation by Father Martin, the superior of the Jesuits in Canada, who amended the text in places, and included the Biard Relation of 1613. He also gave an account of unprinted ones still preserved in Canada which were written subsequent to 1672, when the annual printing of them ceased.
Deriving help from this and other sources, Dr. O’Callaghan issued privately, in 1853, a broadside, with an amended list of the Relations and their several principal repositories,—State Library, Albany; Harvard College Library; the Parliamentary Library, Quebec; and the private libraries of Mr. Carter-Brown of Providence, Mr. Lenox of New York, Rev. Mr. Plante, Mr. O. H. Marshall of Buffalo, and Mr. George Bancroft.
In June, 1870, Dr. O’Callaghan issued a circular asking information of owners of the volumes for a second edition of his tract; but I cannot learn that the new edition was ever published. At the sale of Dr. O’Callaghan’s library December, 1882, his Catalogue, p. 105, showed 31 of the series; and they brought $1,068.45. Dr. O’Callaghan contributed a paper on the Relations to the International Magazine, iii. 185.
Carter-Brown Library: Catalogue, vol. ii. p. 164.
Lenox Library: Contributions, no. ii., The Jesuit Relation, etc., New York, 1879. The Relation of 1659, of which the copy in the Library of the Canadian Parliament was supposed to be unique, was reprinted in fac-simile by Mr. Lenox. In 1854, at the destruction of the Parliamentary Library at Montreal, its series of these Relations, forty-three in number (except eight), and including this unique volume, was destroyed. This Contribution shows the Lenox Library to possess forty-nine out of the series of fifty-five, counting different editions of the forty-one titles, from 1632 to 1672, making the fifty-five to include two translations and twelve second or later editions. The Lenox series lacks nos. 1, 28, and 35, as enumerated, and of no. 35 the Carter-Brown Library has the only copy known in America. The Lenox Library also lacks the first issue of no. 2, and the second issue of nos. 3 and 5. It has four duplicates, with slight variations.