North American Review papers

The manuscripts described in the following catalogue form a part of the papers of the Palfrey family, given to this library in 1941 by Dr. and Mrs. James B. Ayer (Hannah Gilbert Palfrey Ayer). They consist mainly of articles published in the North American Review between 1836 and 1843, the years of John Gorham Palfrey's editorship, and they are listed in the order in which they appear in that publication. As all of these articles were published anonymously and almost all of the manuscripts are unsigned, there was a problem in establishing authorship. The main articles are in most cases correctly attributed in William Cushing's "Index to the North American Review," vols. 1-125. Unfortunately, Cushing had no information as to the authorship of the "Critical Notices." Many of these are attributed in the MS. index, MS Am 540 of this library, which was based partially on annotated copies of the N.A.R. belonging to the printer Charles Folsom. Almost all of the remaining items were able to be identified on the basis of handwriting, so that only 31 published items remain unidentified, and more than half of these are the "Quarterly Lists of New Publications," written in the same unidentified hand. Any additional identifications which future readers of these manuscripts can supply will be most welcome.