University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

This is a collection of Book-of-the-Month club news, mailings, and offers along with a few examples of other book-seller related materials such as advertisements, catalogs, lists, and financial and business documents, mostly receipts. The bulk of the collection is from the years 1850 to 1961 with a few outlying documents from the 1820s to 1840s.

Arthur Hobson Quinn (1875-1960) was a professor and dean of English and History at the University of Pennsylvania and an internationally recognized authority on the history of American drama. This collection contains material representative of Quinn’s entire professional life: correspondence, manuscripts of books and articles, lecture notes, reviews of contemporary plays, his collection of playbills and libretti, and material related to his research on Edgar Allan Poe and the American realist playwright James A. Herne.

A. Mitchell Palmer was a Democrat politician from Pennsylvania who served as Congressman, Alien Property Custodian and Attorney General between 1908 and 1921. This collection covers, to a limited degree, each of these three stages of Palmer’s career. It includes photographs, correspondence, and administrative documentation relating to Palmer’s political campaigns, his support of president Woodrow Wilson, and his involvement with organizations such as the Chemical Foundation, especially during his appointment as Alien Property Custodian.

Burton Rascoe (1892-1957) was an American literary critic, journalist, editor, and author working in the first half of the 20th century. His confrontational style stirred up much debate and helped generate interest in up-and-coming writers that Rascoe believed showed promise; most notably, Rascoe was an early champion of writers such as James Branch Cabell, Theodore Dreiser, and H. L. Mencken. The collection consists of his correspondence, including some with famous literary figures; writings by Rascoe in draft and published form; papers relating to a lawsuit with Max Annenberg; diaries and notebooks; photographs; and clippings.

Charles Mulford Robinson (1869-1917) was a newspaper editor, author, and professor celebrated as one of the United States' first urban planners and early proponents of the "City Beautiful" movement. This collection features several of his urban improvement reports delivered to communities which solicited his services as a "civic advisor," as well as the personal correspondence of him and his wife Eliza; newspaper clippings about his life, death, and activities; scrapbooks; poems, prose-pieces, hymns, and plays composed by Robinson in his spare time; photographs; and other personal records from throughout his life.

Founded in 1907, the Charlotte Cushman Club was originally intended to provide respectable lodgings for actresses appearing in Philadelphia theaters. In the years of World War II the Club ceased to provide residential services, becoming a favorite gathering place of theater lovers as well as of the many actresses and actors visiting the city with their touring companies. The Charlotte Cushman Club Records offer insight into the activities, the administration, and the membership of the Club during the whole life of the organization, until its closure in 1998. The collection also includes part of the holdings of the former Club’s museum and library.

Enid Frank Goldsmith, the sister of Waldo Frank (1889-1967), was born on March 30, 1888, and died on December 7, 1983. The letters in this collection span several generations and mainly include correspondence between various members of the Frank and Goldsmith families between 1886 and 1984. The majority of the letters are either written to or by Enid Goldsmith between 1917 and 1960. Other prominent writers include Waldo Frank, Julius J. Frank, and Morton Goldsmith.

F. (Falco) Antonio Di Cecco (1888-1954) was an Italian American composer and conductor based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The collection includes sixteen complete and unpublished music works by Di Cecco, along with a small number of personal notebooks and printed music books.

Gordon Alexander Block (1885-1964) was a Philadelphia lawyer and collector of Lincoln documents and memorabilia. The collection includes twenty-three documents either signed by Lincoln or in his hand including a number of pleadings and court documents from his years as a lawyer in Illinois. The collection also contains a variety of ephemera from the Civil War era, including campaign ribbons and songbooks from 1860 and 1864 as well as broadsides, ribbons, and mourning cards issued after Lincoln’s assassination. In addition, researchers will find a rich selection of visual representations of Lincoln in the collection, including lithographs, prints, photographs, and engravings of the sixteenth president.

The H.H. Furness Memorial Library focuses on the study of Shakespeare and other Tudor and Stuart dramatists. Horace Howard Furness (1833-1912) and his son Horace Howard Furness Jr. (1865-1930) founded and edited the Variorum Shakespeare and their library was donated to the University of Pennsylvania in 1932. This collection contains personal correspondence to and from Rev. William Henry Furness (1802-1896), Horace Howard Furness, and Horace Howard Furness, Jr., largely relating to Shakespearean study and the H.H. Furness Memorial library; notebooks; copies of speeches and articles; and other assorted items relating to Shakespearean scholarship or to the Furness family.

Herman Goldner (1891-1982) was a businessman of Jewish origins belonging to a musical family from Vienna, Austria. This collection of music programs and ephemera includes more than 400 programs from Vienna (bulk), England, France, Germany, and the United States, as well as about 70 admission ticket stubs, and a small number of clippings and publications.

Jay A. Gertzman is professor emeritus of English at Mansfield University. This collection includes research material collected and used by Jay Gertzman to produce his book Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920-1940;. Documents collected here pertain to the proliferation and censorship of erotic material in the era between the two World Wars.

John Bach McMaster (1852-1932) was an American writer and professor best known for his landmark history of the United States, A History of the People of the United States, which appeared in eight volumes from 1883 to 1913. McMaster’s historical technique was notable in its use of newspaper material and his insistence on providing social context from all classes, not simply the political leaders of the time. This collection contains correspondence, writings by McMaster, material used by McMaster in his research, and personal material, such as newspaper clippings of his life and work, testimonials by colleagues, and memorabilia.

This collection contains material related to the professional, academic, and personal life of John Louis Haney (1877-1960), a high school principal, scholar, and book collector. It contains correspondence; research notes on various topics; and manuscript drafts of essays, talks, and radio transcripts, as well as an inventory of his library and journals concerning his undergraduate and graduate education.

Jurgis Šaulys (1879-1948) was a Lithuanian civic leader, an economist, a signatory of the Lithuanian Declaration of Independence in 1918, and later, a diplomat. He had a great interest in many subjects and was involved with political and literary organizations. Much of his correspondence in this collection is with prominent Lithuanian scholars and literary and political figures.

Lewis George Sterner (1894-1965) was a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed a doctoral thesis on "The Sonnet in American Literature" (submitted 1930). The bulk of this collection consists of letters to Lewis George Sterner from prominent poets and literary figures from 1927 to 1930, as a result of Sterner's research for his dissertation regarding the trends in American sonnet-writing and relating to permissions for using these writers' sonnets in his thesis.

A. Mitchell Palmer was a Democratic politician from Pennsylvania who served as Congressman, Alien Property Custodian and Attorney General between 1908 and 1921. This collection consists of material largely relating to Palmer's political career, from 1912 until his retirement in 1921. Researchers will find material created during Palmer's life time as well as material collected, after his death, by family, including photographs, political cartoons, material relating to his unsuccessful 1920 run for president, and an address given by Palmer at Swarthmore College.

The Lippincott Library supports business related research at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Corporate annual reports were originally collected by the library as a resource for business students. These reports typically provide financial information and updates on operations. The collection includes reports of companies from a variety of industries including agriculture, energy, food, and transportation.

The collection comprises the personal papers of Alma Mahler, the personal and professional papers of Franz Werfel, memorabilia related to Gustav Mahler, and the research files of Adolf D. Klarmann concerning Franz Werfel. Materials include correspondence to and from Alma Mahler and Franz Werfel, as well as to and from Adolf Klarmann, sometimes on behalf of Alma; writings of Alma, such as diaries and memoirs, as well as her musical compositions; writings of Werfel, such as poems, plays, novels, novellas and stories, and essays; memorabilia relating to Alma, her parents, Gustav Mahler, and Werfel, such as clippings, programs, and personal documents; photographs; and audio files, such as interviews and songs. Also included are Klarmann’s research notes and writings on Werfel, as well as material relating to Klarmann’s work as editor of Werfel’s writings.

Wolrd's fairs and expositions have been held internationally from 1851 and continue into the present. This collection comprises written materials, memorabilia, and, to a more limited extent, other materials such as photographs and musical recordings from or related to world's fairs and expositions that took place between 1851 and 1992. Most expositions recognized by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) are represented, as well as many that are not officially recognized by the BIE. Some non-world's fair events are also represented to a limited extent. While events from around the world are featured in the collection, it primarily centers on expositions that occurred in the United States.

This is a collection of miscellaneous music material, including manuscript scores, printed scores, and printed sheet music. In addition to the music material, there is a letter and a photograph which were sent to Benedict Nenninger.

This collection includes material collected by Siegfried Weisbeger (1896-1984), proprietor of the Peabody Book Shop in Baltimore Maryland and confidante of H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), a noted writer, editor, and social provocateur, famous for his disdain for common morals and received wisdom. The collection contains correspondence between the two men and other correspondents of the Peabody Book Shop, manuscripts and published writings by and about Mencken (many of them signed), and autobiographical writings and poems written by Weisberger.

Thomas Sovereign Gates, Sr. (1873-1948), a Philadelphia native and University of Pennsylvania alumnus, served as the first president of the University of Pennsylvania from 1930 to 1944. The collections consists of 36 volumes of scrapbooks containing newspaper clippings, programs, and ephemera, largely dating from the years immediately preceding Gates' presidency at the University of Pennsylvania through his death in 1948.

Collection contains 54 boxes of professional and family correspondence; 68 boxes of writings by Brooks, including typescripts, galleys, and notes for books, articles, prefaces, and addresses, as well as juvenalia, diaries, and notebooks; and 20 boxes of memorabilia, photographs, and newspaper clippings.

Vera Dreiser (circa 1908-1998) was a psychologist who practiced first in New York from 1947 to 1961, and later in California until her retirement in 1972. She is the niece of novelist Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) and of composer Paul Dresser (1858-1906). This collection is comprised of materials from Vera Dreiser’s personal and professional life as well as materials related to the musical and literary estates of Paul Dresser and Theodore Dreiser.