Swain worked with and published some thousands of engravings, and many have survived in institutions and private ownership. The best archive is the Harold Hartley Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; this consists of hundreds of proofs, prints, and wood-blocks. The other, most substantial collection is housed in the Houghton Library, Harvard University, which contains a number of blocks, some of them painted and/or with pencil annotations. Numerous prints are held in the British Museum, London, and the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, has proofs in the collection of Gordon Ray. BMAG (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, UK), has blocks, proofs, prints, photographs and original drawings in stages of readiness. Swain’s proofs for Hardy’s The Hand of Ethelberta can be found in the Cushing Memorial Library, University of Texas. Collections of mounted prints in the manner prescribed by Forrest Reid are housed in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Reid’s own collection), the Barber Institute, University of Birmingham, UK, BMAG, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and Aberystwyth University School of Art, Wales. Manuscript letters are located in the M.L. Parrish Collection, Princeton University, and the Houghton Library has important correspondence between Swain and Tenniel.
Last modified 12 August 2017