MembreHannahLeeCorbin

Hannah is known to have ordered books from several London booksellers, as well as through her relatives and contacts in Philadelphia and other cities (in a 1780 letter to her sister Alice Lee Shippen she complains "& other things came safe as did the money but the most valuable part the Books I never have got").

A portion of the books included here, most likely those of a classical/historical bent, probably came from Hannah's father's library at Stratford, her childhood home. The medical texts, or at least a large majority of them, probably were those of Dr. Hall.

The titles included here are found in several invoices and estate inventories of Hannah Lee Corbin, now in the collections of the Virginia Historical Society.

Tags have been added as appropriate.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Do you know of additional books which should be included here? Please contact Libraries of Early America coordinator Jeremy Dibbell.

Hannah Lee Corbin (6 February 1728 - 1782), Virginia landowner and planter. The daughter of Virginia politician/planter Thomas Lee and Hannah Ludwell Lee, the sister of Richard Henry, Francis Lightfoot, Philip Ludwell, William and Arthur Lee, the niece of Captain Henry Lee, and the cousin of Squire Richard Lee. She received an extensive education at her family's Stratford Hall plantation, being tutored by Revs. David Currie and William Douglas.

Hannah married wealthy planter Gawin Corbin in 1748, and moved with him to his plantation at Peckatone, in Westmoreland County. Widowed in 1759/60, Hannah was left to manage the plantation and raise her daughter Martha. She cohabited for many years with Dr. Richard Lingan Hall (d. 1774), with whom she had two children; the two apparently never married (perhaps so that Hannah could retain her status and inheritance as a widow).

In 1769 Hannah relinquished control of Peckatone to her daughter Martha and removed to Woodberry, in Richmond County. She visited her sister Alice Lee Shippen at Philadelphia in 1780, and died at the Westmoreland County plantation of Mrs. McFarland in 1782. She was buried at her own plantation, Woodberry.

Hannah, like the rest of her farmily, supported the Revolution (but complained of its effects), and she is known as an early supporter of increased rights for women.

For more on Hannah Lee Corbin, see Paul C. Nagel, The Lees of Virginia: seven generations of an American family. NY: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 54-64.