University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

David B. Walker lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and attended Smedley Elementary, the Alexander Henry School, Harding Junior High, Frankford High, and Northeast High Summer School probably between 1924 and 1934. This collection contains his school notebooks and projects from elementary school to high school as well as practice forms and notes from his junior and senior business courses.

Urbain Ghislain Joseph Jean Vaes (1896-1967) was a Belgian professor of business who spent most of his career at the University of Louvain/Leuven. After completing his undergraduate studies at Louvain, he received a scholarship to move to Philadelphia to study business at the University of Pennsylvania. The collection includes materials relating to the German occupation of Belgium, likely collected by Vaes during the war.

This collection contains pamphlets, reports, and other printed materials concerning nursing education in the mid-20th century. Also included is a postcard depicting an early visiting nurse automobile.

This collection contains donations made by William Helfand, a noted collector of medical ephemera. Materials include printed pamphlets, sheet music, and posters.

Cigarette and trade cards started as packaging stiffeners and aide-memoire slips, respectively, and evolved into widespread collectible items during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. This collection contains 6 volumes of trade and cigarette cards from various companies dating between the mid 19th and 20th centuries.

This is an artificial collection of miscellaneous items that came to the Bates Center unsolicited and/or for which provenance is unclear. These individual items are not related to each other by subject, material type, or provenance. Materials may include organizational records, correspondence, personal notebooks, and ephemera.

The Bates Center's Small Collections are various, unrelated accessions that have been individually assigned collection numbers. Many of the Small Collections consist of a single folder.

The Philadelphia School for Nurses it was a lecture course for nurses. This collection consists of photocopies of bulletins and booklets related to the school and its teachings.

This artificial collection contains miscellaneous small donations related to the Philadelphia General Hospital School of Nursing. They were primarily given by alumni over a period of many years, but some items are of unknown provenance. This collection may include artifacts, publications, personal papers, photographs, and records related to the PGH Training School for Nurses.

These papers document Doris Bloch’s role in creating a national nursing research agenda, evaluating agenda priorities, and developing agency funding guidelines while during various roles within the National Center of Nursing Research, Division of Nursing, Department of Health and Human Services.

Paul Jones (1897-1974) was a highly regarded newspaper columnist, author, historian, teacher and worldwide lecturer known for his expertise in history, language and world affairs. This collection contains the published columns of Paul Jones from his time at the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin as well as a few of his short stories.

Edward Sculley Bradley (1897-1987) was a scholar, author, educator, and administrator at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a prolific writer and editor, serving as editor of the General Magazine and History Chronicle, Philadelphia, 1945-1956. He published biographies of literary figures George Henry Boker and Henry Charles Lea, as well as editions of works by Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman. Bradley was considered an international expert on Whitman, editing several important editions of the poet's Leaves of Grass. The Sculley Bradley papers include his personal and professional correspondence dating from 1923 to 1962, material from several literary censorship cases for which he testified, corrected drafts of his manuscripts for the Comprehensive Reader's Edition, Norton Critical Edition, and Variorum edition of Leaves of Grass, ephemera and graphics associated with Walt Whitman, and a small amount of material on other authors.

Howard Melvin Fast (1914-2003) was a best-selling and prolific American author of historical fiction, mysteries, and science fiction, known for his books on themes of patriotism, social justice, and the immigrant experience. He wrote nearly 100 books and more than 150 short stories, as well as numerous screenplays, stage plays, and newspaper columns. The Howard Fast papers include correspondence, journals, appointment books, address books, financials, writings, promotion and reviews, scrapbooks, biographies, profiles, chronologies, bibliographies, interviews, governmental and political files, vital records, personal documents, awards, photographs, artwork, and audiovisual materials. The papers were deposited at the University of Pennsylvania over the course of 45 years and represent nearly all facets of the writer's life.

The Marlboro Music School and Festival Records spans Marlboro’s history from 1950 through 2013 and showcases its influence on chamber music in America as it documents its growth from a small and informally organized summer school in the early 1950s to its current status as a prestigious institution that has shaped careers and inspired the formation of numerous renowned ensembles. The school's emphasis is on the intensive study of chamber music where young and senior professionals collaborate in a relaxed atmosphere that is removed from the demanding rehearsal and performance schedules that they face throughout the year. The collection comprises administrative documents, concert programs, printed promotional materials, articles and reviews, photographs, and audio-visual materials relating to the Marlboro School of Music and annual summer festival as well as the related Musicians from Marlboro touring series and the Marlboro Recording Society.

The Training Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the Renshū Kantai, operated from 1903 to 1940. Graduates of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy would spend several months in training deployment throughout the Pacific Ocean and beyond, occasionally venturing as far as the Mediterranean Sea or the East Coast of the United States. This scrapbook ( digital facsimile) represents the collected travel ephemera and training manuals of an unidentified member of the June 9-November 3, 1936 transpacific cruise, during which the ships Yakumo and Iwate under the command of Vice-Admiral Zengo Yoshida traveled from Yokosuka to New York and back again.

Felix E. Schelling (1858-1945) was a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, an expert on Shakespeare, and an author of scholarly works on Shakespeare and Elizabethan literature. This collection documents Schelling's life as a student, a professor, a scholar, and an author. It also documents the University of Pennsylvania through the eyes of an individual who was a student and a faculty member over a period of more than fifty years.

Dr. Chava Weissler has been the Philip and Muriel Berman Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Religion Studies Department of Lehigh University since 1988. Her areas of interest are women in Jewish history, Jewish folklore, classical Jewish texts, and Jewish and American popular religion. This collection, dating from 1982 to 1999, contains writings by Dr. Weissler, as well as her personal notes and research documents. The bulk of the materials document the research and writing of Dr. Weissler’s first book, Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women, published in 1998.

Edward St. John Gorey (1925-2000) was an American author and artist, primarily known for his children’s stories and illustrations of children’s books, although he also produced adult-oriented work. Sometime around 1977, Gorey established a company, Doomed Enterprises, to handle all matters related to publication and licensing of his work. This collection consists primarily of records of Andreas Brown's and the Gotham Book Mart's records relating to Doomed Enterprises, documents relating to the execution of the Edward Gorey estate after 2000 (for which Brown served as an executor), and other documents and artifacts documenting Gorey’s public image and legacy.

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.

Esther B. Aresty (1908-2000) was a cookbook collector and culinary historian who wrote on food, cooking and etiquette. This collection documents Aresty's personal and professional activities, primarily through correspondence, publication drafts, and research materials regarding her books, entitled The Grand Venture (1963), The Delectable Past (1964), The Best Behavior (1970), and The Exquisite Table (1980).

Mary Navis, known as "the duchess of swing," was a female big band leader and trumpeter. She once performed in Ina Ray Hutton’s all-female group, but left to head her own group with an all-male backing. This collection consists of correspondence, memorabilia, newspaper clippings, and photographs, spanning from 1933 to 1942 and all related to Navis’s career.

A collection of playbills and other ephemera of a young lady's travels in Europe, particularly Paris, collected by Florence Bayard Kane, daughter of the prominent Kane family of Philadelphia, primarily between 1899 and 1900.

Mary Colum (nee Maguire) (1884-1957) was a literary critic known for her memoir, Life and the Dream, the posthumously published Our Friend James Joyce, as well as contributions to such magazines as Scribner's, The Saturday Review of Literature, and The Forum, where she also served as literary editor. Padraic Colum (1881-1972) was a poet, playwright, novelist, biographer, and folklorist, known primarily for his collections of myths and folktales for children, his novels Castle Conquer and The Flying Swans, a volume of collected poetry, and several plays. This collection contains 20 boxes of material relating to the works and careers of Padraic and Mary Colum, the management of Padraic Colum's estate following his death, and the life of Emmet Greene, nephew of Padraic and Mary Colum and executor of Padraic Colum's estate.

The Aspero family collection of World War II ephemera documents the living conditions and the deprivations endured by the Asperos and other American families during the world conflict. The collection includes rationing books and stamps, informational materials, and greeting cards from two members of the family, who served in the military during the war.