The Guide and Index to the Microform Edition of the John Muir Papers 1858 - 1957
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THE GUIDE AND INDEX TO THE MICROFORM EDITION OF THE JOHN MUIR PAPERS 1858 - 1957 Edited by Ronald H. Limbaugh and Kirsten E. Lewis Published by Chadwyck-Healey Inc. 1986 Pro uesf Start here. This volume is a finding aid to a ProQuest Research Collection in Microform. To learn more visit: www.proquest.com or call (800) 521-0600 About ProQuest: ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company has forged a 70-year reputation as a gateway to the world's knowledge-from dissertations to governmental and cultural archives to news, in all its forms. Its role is essential to libraries and other organizations whose missions depend on the delivery of complete, trustworthy information. 789 E. Eisenhower Parkw~y • P.O Box 1346 • Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 • USA •Tel: 734.461.4700 • Toll-free 800-521-0600 • www.proquest.com Chadwyck-Healey Inc. 1021 Prince Street, Alexandria, VA 22314 Tulephone: (703) 683-4890 Distributed outside the USA by: Chadwyck-Healey Ltd. Cambridge Place Cambridge CB2 1NR, UK Telephone: (0223) 311479 THE GUIDE AND INDEX TO THE MICROFORM EDITION OF THE JOHN MUIR PAPERS 1858 - 1957 Edited by Ronald H. Limbaugh and Kirsten E. Lewis Published by Chadwyck-Healey Inc. 1986 The Guide and Index to the Microform Edition of the John Muir Papers 1858-1957 Copyright c 1986 by the University of the Pacific All rights reserved I.S.B.N. 0-89887-050-X TABLE OF CONTENTS I. EDITORS INTRODUCTION 1. THE NEED FOR A COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTARY EDITION--------------- 1 2. MUIR PROJECT SEARCH PROCEDURES--------------------------------- 2 3. SERIES ORGANIZATION AND FILMING PROCEDURE---------------------- 3 4. EDITORIAL CONTROLS--------------------------------------------- 7 5. BIO-BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES----------------------------------- 8 II. CREDITS AND RESTRICTIONS---------------------------------------------- 10 III. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS------------------------------------------------------ 16 IV. JOHN MUIR BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH----------------------------------------- 17 V. JOHN MUIR CHRONOLOGY--------------------------------------------------- 20 VI. ERRATA---------------------------------------------------------------- 32 VII. CONTENTS OF EACH MICROFORM 1. PART ONE: MICROFILM Series I: Correspondence and related documents (Reels 1-22)--- 33 Series II: Journals and Sketchbooks (Reels 23-30)------------- 34 Series III: Manuscripts and published works (Reels 31-51) Series IIIA: Notebooks (Reels 31-33)------------------- 39 Series IIIB,C,D: Published and precursor works, unpublished works, and miscellaneous notes(Reels 33-51)----------------------------------------- 40 Series V: Related papers (Reel 51)---------------------------- 62 2. PART TWO: MICROFICHE Series IV: Pictorial Works (Fiche 1-53) Series IVA: Drawings (Fiche 1-7)----------------------- 66 Series IVB: Photographs (Fiche 8-53)------------------- 68 VIII. INDEX 1. USING THE INDEX------------------------------------------------ 80 2. KEY TO ACCESSION NUMBERS MENTIONED IN NOTE REFERENCES---------- 81 3. COMPUTERIZED ENTRIES------------------------------------------- 85 EDITORS' INTRODUCTION 1. THE NEED FOR A COMPREHENSIVE MUIR EDITION Although he has been dead for over seventy years, John Muir has a larger international following today than during his own lifetime. Few naturalists since the Civil War have attained Muir's stature. As intellectual precursor of the modern environmental movement, he perhaps above all others led the nation toward an understanding and appreciation of the natural environment and its value as both material and spiritual resource. More than just a naturalist, Muir was a discerning observer of the natural world, challenging conventional scientific theories and helping rewrite textbooks on glaciation and other geologic phenomena. He was also a gifted writer, awakening public interest in wilderness values through a prolific outpouring of articles and essays over a forty-year period. His most important national contribution grew out of his political activism. Recognized as one of the Founding Fathers of the National Park system, he was instrumental in the establishment of Yosemite, Sequoia, Grand Canyon, Mt. Rainier and other parks and monuments. As founder and first president of the Sierra Club he helped set in motion what was to become the most influential organization in the conservation field. By the turn of the 20th century Muir's mystical reverence for wilderness brought him into conflict with management-oriented conservationists, including Gifford Pinchot, who veered away from what they considered unproductive primitivism. His long and bitter battle over Retch Hetchy brought fundamental questions of wilderness preservation to national attention for the first time, and his leadership in the preservation movement was probably the most important catalyst in the creation of the National Park Service. The need for a new, complete and uncut edition of John Muir's works has been apparent since the rebirth of environmentalism in the 1960s. Since that time a new generation of scholars has turned attention to Muir, but they have been limited primarily to the study of his published works--nearly 500 books, articles and reprints as of 1975, according to the definitive bibliography by William and Maymie Kimes. This output represents perhaps the majority of Muir's extant writings, yet they are widely diffused, span a period of 75 years, often are difficult to locate- and use, and--most important--are selective and fragmentary. For example, shortly after Muir's death in 1914 Frederick William Bade published a two-volume Life and Letters of John Muir which was made up primarily of heavily-edited selections from letters written by Muir to relatives and friends. A ten-volume collected edition of his works, compiled largely from previous publications, was made available in the early Twenties. Over the next two decades Linnie Marsh Wolfe published two books. The first, John of the Mountains (1938), contained excerpts from his journals; and the second:'" Son of the Wilderness (1945), was a Pulitzer prize-winning but uncritical biography-.~~~- Wolfe was the only scholar between 1945 and the late 1970s who had full and open access to Muir's personal papers. Both the physical and literary property rights to those papers that were part of the Muir estate have remained with the Muir-Hanna families, who stored part of them briefly as a closed collection at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. Later they were transferred to Bancroft l Library under the same restricted terms. In 1970 the heirs placed the bulk of the papers on indefinite loan with the Holt-Atherton Center for Western Studies at the University of the Pacific. Over a period of several years they have added several smaller collections, including papers loaned between 1938 and 1945 to the Yosemite Research Library in Yosemite National Park. Perhaps 75% of Muir's extant works now reside at the Holt-Atherton Center. The remainder--mostly letters Muir wrote to relatives, friends and associates--are scattered among some 40 repositories and individual collections throughout the United States. Outside the Holt-Atherton Center, the major Muir repositories are the Bancroft Library, the Huntington Library, and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. 2. MUIR PROJECT SEARCH PROCEDURES With major funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and through the cooperation of the Muir-Hanna families, the University of the Pacific in 1981 launched the John Muir Papers Microform Project. Its major objective was to gather, arrange and publish, for the first time, virtually all of Muir's correspondence, journals, unpublished manuscripts and collected illustrations. Locating and gathering facsimile copies of Muir material in other repositories was the project staff's first task. The search procedure was built upon the foundation established by two previous Muir editors, Frederick Bade and Linnie Marsh Wolfe. Bade, literary executor and editor of the Muir papers from 1915 until his death in 1936, solicited nearly all of Muir's family members, friends and acquaintances. He acquired hundreds of Muir items and made transcriptions of all original material he did not have permission to keep. After Bade's death the Muir family appointed Wolfe to carry on with the work of organizing and publishing what remained. Although a careful scholar, Wolfe was an untrained editor, and her one-volume documentary edition (John of the Mountains) was highly selective and heavily emended. Fortunately, both the Bade and Wolfe papers have been preserved, so that current project staff can reconstruct both the search procedure and the editorial policies of these early Muir publication directors. Rather than replicate earlier efforts, Muir project staff developed a search procedure that emphasized institutional rather than individual solicitation. A form letter explaining the project and asking for help in locating Muir material was sent to all major and likely repositories across the country. Outside of California, major archival and historical publications received a press release describing the project and its goals. Within California the news release was sent to historical societies, libraries, and newspapers throughout the State, as well as to likely individual collectors and their organizational journals. To search federal repositories, in 1981 project staff hired a professional researcher who covered all likely collections and record groups in the National Archives and in the