George Ripley scrapbooks and Brook Farm Phalanx pupil register
Overview
Scrapbooks of clippings by and about American social reformer and journalist, George Ripley, as well as an autograph manuscript register of pupils at his Brook Farm Phalanx (West Roxbury, Boston, Mass.).
Dates
- Creation: 1845-1880
Language of Materials
Collection materials are in English.
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material.
Extent
2 linear feet (5 boxes)Scrapbooks of reviews and clippings by or about Ripley, from the New York Tribune and other newspapers and journals. Volumes probably compiled by Ripley. Also includes an 1875 manuscript draft of a letter by Ripley and a print of Walter Savage Landor. Volumes include some manuscript annotations and a manuscript index, some possibly by Ripley.
Titles of volumes were supplied by cataloger. Spines of volumes are all missing.
One of these scrapbooks of clippings [item (6)], was originally used by Ripley as a register for names of pupils at the Brook Farm community. His autograph manuscript entries were mostly pasted-over with clippings at a later date.
Biographical / Historical
George Ripley (1802–1880) was an American Unitarian minister, critic, journalist, and social reformer associated with the Transcendentalist movement. He was an 1823 graduate of Harvard College and also studied at the Harvard Divinity School. In1841 he founded the Utopian community Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Brook Farm was a cooperative community based on a transcendental utopian model. In 1844, it began to run on a model inspired by Charles Fourier and in 1845 officially declared itself a Fourierist Phalanx. In 1846 he split with the community and it folded in 1847. After the failure of Brook Farm, he worked as a freelance journalist and in 1849 was hired by Horace Greeley at the New York Tribune. He also later published the New American Cyclopaedia.
Arrangement
Arranged in volume number order.
Physical Location
b
Provenance:
The 1896 donor's letter from Samuel A. Green of the Massachusetts Historical Society to Justin Winsor, Librarian of the Harvard College Library, states that these scrapbooks "came from Mr. Octavius B[rooks] Frothingham's library, with other matter; and I had the authority to divert these books...Mr. Frothingham, as you know, wrote a Life of Ripley, - hence these papers were in his possession." [for letter see MS Am 860].
Immediate Source of Acquisition
No accession number. Gift of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts; received: 1896 March 23. Recataloged from AL 3148.5.015*.
Separated Materials
These scrapbooks were received with MS Am 931-931.1, Brook Farm Phalanx account book in Ripley's hand; and MS Am 860, Ripley's Commonplace book. Donor letter is in MS Am 860. All materials appear to have been held by Octavius Brooks Frothingham, a friend and biographer of Ripley.
Processing Information
Processed by: Bonnie B. Salt
- Title
- Ripley, George, 1802-1880. George Ripley scrapbooks and Brook Farm Phalanx pupil register, 1845-1880: Guide.
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou02186
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
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