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Introduction INTRODUCTION ON DECEMBER 7, 1968, Lawrence Henry Gipson celebrated 0his eighty-eighth birthday. An active scholar for the past sixty-five years, Gipson continues to contribute articles and re- views to scholarly journals while completing his life work, The British Einpire before the American Revolution. This historical classic appeared in thirteen volumes published between 1936 and 1967. Two further bibliographical volumes covering printed ma- terials and unpublished manuscripts will appear in 1969 and 1970 bringing to a conclusion a project conceived nearly a half century ago. Certainly these volumes, for which he has received the Loubat Prize, the Bancroft Prize in American History, and the Pulitzer Prize in American History, mark Gipson as one of the master historians of our time. Born in Greeley, Colorado, in 1880, and raised as the son of the local newspaper editor in Caldwell, Idaho; Gipson planned to be a journalist before receiving the opportunity to leave the Uni- versity of Idaho where he had earned an A.B. degree in 1903 and go to Oxford with the first group of Rhodes scholars in 1904. In "Recollections," he relates an early experience at Oxford which determined the future direction of his life. Following the comple- tion of his B.A. degree at Oxford and a brief stint teaching at the College of Idaho, Gipson went to work on the British Empire with Charles McLean Andrews at Yale University from which he received a Ph.D. degree in 1918. Gipson has taught at a number of colleges and universities in- cluding Oxford where he served as Harmsworth Professor in 1951-1952, but most of his years have been spent at Lehigh Uni- versity in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In 1911 Gipson had gone to Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, to establish a depart- ment of history and political science. Following World War I and the successful completion of his doctoral dissertation, he found the press of administrative duties constricting and looked for a university where he might be allowed to pursue the seemingly im- possible project that he had begun to plan while writing his dissertation. Lehigh was that university. According to Gipson, 7 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY "When President E. R. Richards and Professor Phillip Palmer, head of the curriculum of arts and sciences at Lehigh asked me to come here in 1924 and establish a department of history and government, I told them that the only thing that would induce me to come to Lehigh would be the opportunity, after organiz- ing the department to go ahead on my project. I wanted to be relieved of committee work. They assured me that I would be and I was." Gipson functioned as head of the department which he created until 1946 when he was appointed research professor in history. Gipson was made professor emeritus in 1952 at the age of seventy-two, but he has continued to work in his suite of offices on the fourth floor of the Linderman Library and to play an invaluable role in strengthening and developing the Lehigh history department. For the last ten years the university has supported the completion of Gipson's project. This relation- ship between Gipson and Lehigh has been long and fruitful bring- ing honor to both the man and the institution. While at Lehigh, Gipson has taken an active part in many pro- fessional societies and was president of the Conference on British Studies from 1959-1961, but he has retained a particular paternal interest in the Pennsylvania Historical Association. Dean Roy Franklin Nichols, a Pulitzer Prize winner himself and perhaps the leading authority on the coming of America's "Second Revolu- tion," recalls Gipson's crucial role in the creation of this organiza- tion. Gipson served as president of the Pennsylvania Historical Association in the late 1930's and has remained active as a mem- ber of its governing council. Recently he took great pride in bringing the editorial office of the association's journal, PENN- SYLVANIA HISTORY, to Lehigh. While he has served as a teacher and administrator, Gipson has always been first and foremost an historian, thoroughly profes- sional and totally dedicated to search for truth. Several years ago he wrote, "The worth of my series as a history will be de- termined, among other things, I am convinced, by degree of detachment with which it is written. For the most rigid test of Historical scholarship is not only that all the important material shall be gathered together, but also that it shall be evaluated judiciously to support the writer's preconception." Professor Jackson Turner Main of the Institute for Colonial Studies at INTRODUCTION 9 the State University of New York at Stony Brook has used this standard to judge the series now that it is completed and has produced the best rounded analysis of Gipson's work to date. Throughout the years, as the compilation of the major reviews shows, the leading historians in the profession have measured Gipson against similar standards and not found him wanting. It is sometimes overlooked that had Gipson never written his series on the British Empire, he would still rank as a major historian of the American Revolution. His doctoral dissertation on Jared Ingersoll received the Justin Winsor Prize of the American Historical Association when it appeared in 1920; his compilations of documents are often invaluable; and his many essays and volume in the New American Nation series, The Coming of the Revolution, are mandatory reading for graduate students in American history. Although now eighty-eight years of age and frail in stature, Gipson maintains a schedule that is the embodiment of Teddy Roosevelt's "strenuous life." Gipson works eight hours or more a day, six days a week, and walks several miles each day to and from his office on the Lehigh campus. The results of Gipson's "strenuous life" can be seen in the bibliography compiled by Miss Jean M. Stauffer, his research assistant, especially for this volume. This bibliography includes Gipson's writings from his first article on Idaho which appeared in 1904 to his most recent book review in the June, 1968, American Historical Review. Ten years ago at a luncheon honoring his seventy-eighth birthday, Gipson was presented a bound bibliography of his writings compiled by Mr. James Mack, Lehigh University Librarian, and Mrs. Jere Knight, then Gipson's research assistant. Miss Stauffer, who has taken Mrs. Knight's place, has supplemented that bibliography and brought it up to the present. Truly it is the record of a life of unprecedented scholarship..
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