Overview
Personal and professional letters written to author, poet, and teacher James Russell Lowell.
Dates
- Creation: 1840-1891
Language of Materials
Collection materials are in English, Spanish, and French.
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material.
Extent
2 linear feet (4 boxes)Collection consists primarily of letters to Lowell written during his diplomatic career and refer to professional and personal life, including lecture invitations, dinner invitations, and comments on social matters. Also contains correspondence with family members, notably his daughter Mabel Lowell Burnett, and Charles Lowell, as well as correspondence of Maria White Lowell and a draft of her will. Collection also contains autograph drafts of poems and essays, as well as a commonplace book, his diaries and engagement books, which primarily note lunch dates and other meetings. There are receipts and account statements, pertaining mainly to The Pioneer, as well as Lowell's personal financial records. Collection includes some Lowell family letters from the 18th and early 19th cent., containing family history, a manuscript copy of an act of the U.S. Continental Congress dated 1782, news clippings, and photographs.
Biographical / Historical
Lowell was an author, poet, editor, teacher, and diplomat. He edited the Atlantic Monthly (1857-1861), and with Charles Eliot Norton, the North American Review (1864- ); was professor of French and Spanish Languages and Literatures at Harvard (1855-1886) succeeding Longfellow; and U.S. minister to Spain (1877-1880), and to England (1880-1885).
Arrangement
Organized into the following series:
- I. Correspondence and compositions
- II. Unidentified papers
- III. Miscellanea
- IV. Papers concerning The Pioneer
- V. Financial records
- ___A. Real estate receipts, taxes, and statements
- ___B. Personal receipts
Immediate Source of Acquisition
*43M-775. Deposited by Mrs. Lois Burnett Rantoul, Road, Chestnut Hill, Mass; received: 1944 June.
- Title
- Lowell, James Russell, 1819-1891. James Russell Lowell additional papers, 1840-1891: Guide.
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou00328
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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