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Letters (Correspondence)

Balestier discusses the publication of Boyesen's book, The mammon of unrighteousness, 1891, by John W. Lovell Co., London.

Anti-Catholicism in literature, Autographs -- Collectors and collecting, Books -- Reviews, Depressions -- 1873, Divorce, Editing, Lectures and lecturing, Poetry, Socialism, World War, 1914-1918, Letters (Correspondence), Manuscripts for publication, Page proofs, and Salted paper prints

The papers of William Dean Howells,1866-1919, include reviews, stories, and poems, letters, and portraits.
Manuscripts include poems "The thorn," "The pilot's story," Thanksgiving," "John Brown," "To Francis Wilson," "Presentiments," and an untitled sonnet to Dorothy Dudley; short stories "At third hand," and "Captain Dunlevy's last trip"; reviews of work by Brand Whitlock, J.M. LeMoine, essays on Rudyard Kipling, John Fiske, and American and English literature; quotation, and page proofs of "A retrospect of Lowell."
Topics in the correspondence include editorial work for Harpers, Century, and Atlantic Monthly, advice on writing, translation and publication, his own writing including divorce as a theme, proofreading, lecture tours particularly a westen one in 1899, and his family.
He also mentions rumors concerning the visit of the Russian fleet during the Civil War, the Boston fire of 1872, the panic of 1873, the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, the Century Club, Italian travel, 1883, the Authors Club, an accusation of anti-Catholicism, World War I, socialism, stage productions of his work, Iowa College (Grinnell), and the Pratt Institute.
Significant correspondents include Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, James B. Pond, Arthur George Sedgwick, and John Greenleaf Whittier.
Additional correspondents include Alvey A. Adee, Charlotte Fiske Bates, Sylvester Baxter, Alexander Black, Francis E. Bliss, H.C. Bunner, Madison Cawein, Julius Chambers, Frank Gaylor Cook, George William Curtis, Charles Anderson Dana, Mary Mapes Dodge, Annie Fields, G.P. Putnam's Sons, Wendell Phillips Garrison, Jeanette L. Gilder, Edmund Gosse, Harper & Brothers, Lee F. Hartman, Nina R. Herzog, Aurelia Howells, Thomas A. Janvier, Elizabeth Jordan, Frederick T. Leigh, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, S.S. McClure, and Henry Loomis Nelson.
Also Charles Eliot Norton, John B. O'Reilly, James R. Osgood, Grant Overton, William Morton Payne, Harry Thurston Peck, John J. Piatt, Cuyler Reynolds, William H. Rideing, Kate Douglas Wiggin Riggs, John Codman Ropes, M.E.W. Sherwood, Francis Hopkinson Smith, Edmund Clarence Stedman, John Swinton, Celia Thaxter, Benjamin H. Ticknor, Ross Turner, George E. Waring, John F. Weir, Brand Whitlock, Gilson Willets, and James Grant Wilson.
People mentioned include Jane Addams, Henry Mills Alden, Thomas Baily Aldrich, Irving Bachellor, Charles W. Balestier, Lawrence Barrett, Ole Bull, Francis Marion Crawford, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Frederick A. Duneka, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gugleilmo Ferrero, John Galsworthy, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Ripley Hitchcock, Henry James, Robert Underwood Johnson, James Russell Lowell, Brander Matthews, George H. Mifflin, Henry Codman Potter, H.W. Preston, Horace E. Scudder, Richard Henry Stoddard, Turgenev, Mark Twain, Lester Wallack, and John F. Weir.
Portraits include 6 pencil sketches of Howells enhanced with black and white ink and marked with printer's measurements for publication in an unidentified book or magazine article together with another portrait clipped from a magazine.

Authors and publishers, Evolution, Literary agents, Naturalism in literature, and Realism in literature

The collection contains four poems and sonnets by Boyesen, correspondence with admirers, publishers, other authors and friends, and a photograph.
The centerpiece of the collection is a group of 13 letters in German by author Friedrich Spielhagen of Berlin, known to Boyesen from his years in Germany. The friends help one another with the translation and publication of their literary output in either America or Germany and discuss a wide variety of subjects and problems, particularly political, social, and health.
Other correspondence includes two letters from Louise d'Alq, a French translator, regarding Boyesen's "Gunnar" and the possibility of future translations, and two letters from Archbiship Michael Augustine Corrigan concerning charges of Tammany Hall connections made and retracted by Boyesen.
Specific topics in the correspondence include thoughts on evolution, travels to Russia, the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, Goethe, realism and naturalism in literature particularly in the works of Ibsen and Zola, and Spielhagen's friendship with Carl Schurz.
In addition there are 45 letters and fragments in Norwegian.

1891 12 29

Wishing him and his family "a peaceful and merciful new year. It is always the same old pleasant torment to hear from you - always the same phantasmagoric vision of unattainable Italy. I rejoice that your house holds together as it were - a feeble way of putting it & that you are doing such public as well as such private service...Yes - poor Wolcott Balestier's death was horribly, hideously superfluous. He carried some mysteriously contracted but abominably virulent typhoidal poison with him from London to Dresden & succumbed there - alone in a private hospital - in 12 days. He was full of capacities & possibilities - & to me an unspeakable loss - so many services did it seem likely he would render me. I went to Dresden in time to see him buried, & to try to do something for his mother & sisters; but it was a sorry & weary errand - My sister fails & fails, but the end is not yet. She has had great relief from hypnotism - in the way of (indirect) alleviation of pain - or of exasperated consciousness of it - & of direct quieting of nerves - but everything is exhausted in its turn save her persistent duration in suffering. Her condition however is simplified very considerably from what it was three months ago - & Miss Loring is more than ever a beneficent sorceress. I spent an afternoon with Miss Woolson lately - she clings to her antique Oxford & is very busy & contented, seemingly - void of any offence save that of writing hours & hours on end & bringing on that horrid complaint in her arm & shoulder. But of this she is incurable. I am intensely occupied in averting or rather confronting Xmas bills - & doubtless you are engaged in the same sweet pastime...Farewell, my dear Baldwin & be sure that I share with you every reminiscence of that perspiring pilgrimage. I never yet have quite filled up the cavity in my stomach at Volterra. I think of Taccini as a fat Xmas turkey - with plenty of dressing. I salute him so much. I wish you the best for the next months that Florence can give you..."

Italy, England, Venezia, Venice, London, Astor, Mary Dahlgren Paul, 1858-1894., Astor, William Waldorf Astor, Viscount, 1848-1919., Balestier, Charles Wolcott, 1861-1891., Benedict, Clara Woolson, 1843-1923., Benedict, Clare, 1870-1961., Bourget, Paul, 1852-1935., Bronson, Katherine De Kay, 1834-1901., Browning, Robert Wiedemann Barrett, 1849-1912., Colvin, Sidney, 1845-1927., Curtis, Ariana Wormeley, 1833-1922., Curtis, Daniel Sargent, 1825-1908., Daudet, Alphonse, 1840-1897., Dreyfus, Alfred, 1859-1935., Fiske, Willard, 1831-1904., Gardner, Isabella Stewart, 1840-1924., Godkin, Edwin Lawrence, 1831-1902., Greenough, Louisa, 1809-1892., James, Alice, 1848-1892., Lauder, Thomas Dick, Sir, 1846-1919., Loring, Katherine Peabody, 1849-1943., Mary, Princess, Duchess of Teck, 1833-1897., Mary, Queen, consort of George V, King of Great Britain, 1867-1953., Murri, Augusto, 1841-1932., W. B. N. (William Beauchamp Nevill)., Peruzzi, Edith Story, Marchesa, 1849-1907., Ross, Janet, 1842-1927., Rucellai, Edith Bronson, Countess, 1861-., Schott, Theodor, Dr., 1851-1921., Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894., Tuckerman, Henry T. 1813-1871. (Henry Theodore), Wagnière, Laura Huntington, 1849-., Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900., and Woolson, Constance Fenimore, 1840-1894.

A collection of 69 autograph letters signed, 3 typed letters signed, 2 telegrams and 1 autograph envelope to Dr. William W. Baldwin; written between 1887 and 1900 from Venice, Innsbruck, Vallombrosa, Siena, Rome, Naples, Lausanne, London and Lamb House and several other locations in Great Britain and Europe; discussing his health, his travels, the production of his play "The American", the deaths of his sister, Alice James, Constance Fenimore Woolson and Walcott Balestier, the health of Paul Bourget, a visit from the Benedicts, the Dreyfus case and news of mutual friends. Items in the collection have been described individually in separate catalog records; see related records for more information.