Skip to main content
COLLECTION Identifier: MS Am 765

James Russell Lowell papers

Overview

Papers of American author, poet, editor, teacher, and diplomat James Russell Lowell.

Dates

  • Creation: 1835-1919

Conditions Governing Access

There are no restrictions on physical access to this material.

Extent

8 linear feet (17 boxes)

The bulk of the collection is correspondence, both personal and professional, between Lowell and many of his prominent contemporaries, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Holmes, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Dean Howells, Thomas Hughes, George Bailey Loring, Charles Eliot Norton, Thomas William Parsons, Edmund Quincy, and Richard Grant White. Also include poems, addresses, lectures and other manuscripts, some unpublished, by Lowell as well as notebooks with various notes and drafts, and commonplace books that he kept. In addition, collection contains Norton's correspondence concerning the publication of Lowell's letters, miscellaneous manuscripts and correspondence of third parties, and clippings about Lowell.

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

  1. I. Letters from James Russell Lowell
  2. II. Letters to James Russell Lowell
  3. III. Letters to Charles Eliot Norton concerning Lowell papers
  4. IV. Literary manuscripts of James Russell Lowell
  5. V. Miscellaneous
  6. VI. Notebooks of James Russell Lowell

Physical Location

b

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of Charles Eliot Norton; received: 1903.

Gift of Sara Norton; received: 1911.

Gift of Lawrence Dwight; received: 1920.

Title
Lowell, James Russell, 1819-1891. James Russell Lowell papers: Guide.
Author
Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
Language of description
und
EAD ID
hou00365

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.

Contact:
Harvard Yard
Harvard University
Cambridge MA 02138 USA
(617) 495-2440