Thoreau checks out The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, volume 1 by Edward Gibbon, The Italian sketchbook by Henry Theodore Tuckerman, and Reliques of ancient English poetry, volume 2 edited by Thomas Percy from the library of the Institute of 1770.

Thoreau also checks out The works of the English poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, volume 1 edited by Alexander Chalmers from Harvard College Library (Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 288).