I See Dead People's Books

I See Dead People's Books is a group on LibraryThing that works to enter the libraries of famous dead people as LibraryThing catalogs -- also known as "Legacy Libraries". It is a very diverse group of people from Thomas Jefferson to Tupac Shakur and numbers 49 individual libraries at this time.

Do you read what they read?


Marie Antoinette has 737 books in her library and her own member page. There are no heavy treatises on philosophy or theology, no law books, just piles of novels and plays, with a sprinkling of reference books and history. It seems Marie read for pleasure as do most of us.





Benjamin Franklin has 3,742 books in his library. The following are a few of the tags used: Politics and Government (273), Great Britain (238), Parliament (156), United States (147), History (125), Poetry (113), Church of England (88), Sermons (87), Medicine (82), Electricity (76).




Marilyn Monroe has 261 books in her library. At the time of her death, Monroe's library contained volumes covering a wide range of topics, including religion, literature, cooking, and politics. There were over 400 books, but when they were auctioned by Christie's not all were recorded.




Many more libraries are in progress and you can see the list here. It is interesting to go poking through the books of the rich and famous.

Thomas Jefferson Danilo Kis Tupac Shakur Wolfgang Mozart Isabella Stewart Gardner Sylvia Plath Marie Antoinette Marilyn Monroe Aaron Copland Mary Hartford T. E. Lawrence PA General Assembly	Susan B. Anthony Alfred Deakin Walker Percy John Adams W.H. Auden Ezra Pound Ernest Hemingway Henry Lee Lady Jean Skipwith James & Mary Murray Cuthbert Ogle George S. Patton, Jr. John Worthington
James Smithson F. Scott Fitzgerald John Muir Mather Family (Increase, Cotton, &c.) Samuel Johnson Samuel Roth Joseph Smith Hans Peter Koch Lewis Morris Sarah Willoughby Benjamin Franklin	Charles Lamb Dabney Carr Comte de Fortsas Theodore Dreiser Robert E. Howard Joseph Priestley Elbridge Gerry William Wilberforce Franz Kafka John Askin Jackie Gleason