19th Century Banjo Instruction Manuals

This exhibit features five nineteenth-century banjo instruction manuals held by the Rare Books and Special Collections Department of the Hamilton College Library. These books are just a small part of the 42-piece Robert Fraker Collection of Nineteenth-Century Banjo Instruction Manuals held by the college. To view the full collection see the 19th Century Banjo Collection on Hamilton Collection Digital Collections website.

The exhibit also includes a selected history of the banjo, biographies of the manual authors, and a partial bibliography of primary sources for further research.

Research for this exhibit was conducted during Summer 2011 by Catherine Crone '13 (advised by Professor Lydia Hamessley) as part of her project "A Study of Banjo Instruction Manuals from the Nineteenth Century." This work was funded by an Emerson Summer Collaborative Research Award.