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Contact information: https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mss.contact
Catalog Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/mm78043141
Collection material in English
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the LC Catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically.
The papers of Horace Traubel, poet, critic, and friend and biographer of Walt Whitman, and those of his wife, Anne Montgomerie Traubel, were donated to the Library of Congress in a series of gifts from 1955 to 1987 by their daughter, Gertrude Traubel, and by Charles E. Feinberg. Additional gifts were received from various sources, 1956-2003. In 2013, the papers of Frank Bain and Mildred Bain, friends and financial supporters of Horace Traubel, were donated to the Library of Congress in two gifts from Brian Bain Caldwell and Ellen Bain Purcell.
The papers of Horace Traubel and Anne Montgomerie Traubel were arranged and described in 1975 by Grover Batts and Thelma Queen. Additional material was incorporated into the collection in 1979 by Grover Batts. The papers were reprocessed in 1989 following the addition of significant acquisitions in 1980 by Michael McElderry with the assistance of Paul Cotton, Sherralyn McCoy, Brian McGuire, and Thelma Queen. Further additions to the collection were included 1998-2003 by Michael McElderry with assistance from Kathleen Feeney and Michael W. Giese. In 2018, one letter previously filed as "unidentified" was refiled by Nate Scheible into the "White, Thomas Earle" file in Container 109, and the date of the file changed from "1894-1907" to "1893-1907" to reflect the inclusion of this letter. In 2020, an addition containing the papers of Frank Bain and Mildred Bain, friends and supporters of Horace Traubel, was arranged and described by Annette Scherber.
Early accessions of the Horace Traubel and Anne Montgomerie Traubel Papers are described in “Frontiers: Recent Acquisitions of the Manuscript Division,”
Items have been transferred from the Manuscript Division to other custodial divisions of the Library. Prints, photographs, and other visual and graphic materials have been transferred to the Prints and Photographs Division. Selected books and printed items have been transferred to the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Maps have been transferred to the Geography and Map Division. Phonograph records have been transferred to the Recorded Sound Section of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. All transfers are identified in these divisions as part of the Horace Traubel and Anne Montgomerie Traubel Papers. An oil-on-canvas portrait of Horace Traubel, signed by Arthur Clifton Goodwin and dated 1908, has been transferred to the National Portrait Gallery.
Related collections in the Manuscript Division include Horace Traubel and Anne Montgomerie Traubel materials in the Walt Whitman Papers in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection (see https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms004014).
The status of copyright in the unpublished writings of Horace Traubel and Anne Montgomerie Traubel is governed by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U.S.C.).
The papers of Horace Traubel and Anne Montgomerie Traubel are open to research. Researchers are advised to contact the Manuscript Reading Room prior to visiting. Many collections are stored off-site and advance notice is needed to retrieve these items for research use.
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container number, Horace Traubel and Anne Montgomerie Traubel Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The papers of Horace Traubel (1858-1919) and Anne Montgomerie Traubel (1864-1954) span the years 1824-1979, with most of the material dated from 1883 to 1947. The collection contains separate correspondence series for Horace Traubel and Anne Montgomerie Traubel as well as an exchange of letters between them which chronicles their shared political and intellectual commitments and personal relationship. A diary kept by Horace Traubel describing his visits with Walt Whitman from 1888 until the latter's death in 1892 provides a detailed record of Whitman's daily conversations with Traubel. Published in nine volumes as
Although his poetry was styled after Whitman's, Horace Traubel, unlike his mentor, fused literature with politics in support of personal liberation and collective political action, and, though he took no active part in politics himself, he became a spokesman for American socialism. Traubel was associated with a loosely defined group who hoped to utilize literature and the arts to free society from what they perceived to be middle-class restraints. The papers contain letters written to Horace Traubel from Eugene V. Debs as well as by other radicals and reformers of the time, including Ella R. Bloor, Leigh Danenberg, Theodore Debs, James Waldo Fawcett, Rosalie Goodyear, George Davis and Carrie Rand Herron, Samuel M. Jones, David and Rose Karsner, Robert R. LaMonte, Courtenay Lemon, John Spargo, James Graham Phelps and Rose Pastor Stokes, Benjamin R. Tucker, William English and Anna Strunsky Walling, and Arthur Young. Their letters, located in the Horace Traubel Correspondence series, reflect the common concerns that both united and divided the American socialist movement.
The Traubels cultivated many personal associations among the artistic and cultural avant-garde. They were enthusiastic supporters of the theater and the performing arts and fostered friendships there and among a diverse group of artists, publishers, and writers. Prominent correspondents from literary and artistic circles represented in the Horace Traubel Correspondence series are Albert and Charles Boni, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Edward Gordon Craig, Homer Davenport, Edward Dowden, Edgar Fawcett, Minnie Maddern Fiske, Benjamin Orange Flower, Johnston Forbes-Robertson, Hamlin Garland, Jeannette L. Gilder, Richard Watson Gilder, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ellen Glasgow, Arthur Clifton Goodwin, John Hare, Frank Harris, Edmund Marsden Hartley, Herne family members, Arthur Holitscher, B. W. Huebsch, Robert Underwood Johnson, Mitchell Kennerley, John Lane, Gerald Stanley Lee, Jack London, Charles Edwin Markham, Julia Marlowe, Laurens Maynard, David McKay, Lloyd Mifflin, Sidney H. Morse, Thomas Bird Mosher, Charles A. and George G. Needham, Louis and Olga Nethersole, Curtis Hidden Page, William Ordway Partridge, Ernest Rhys, Upton Sinclair, John Sloan, Herbert Small, William Hawley Smith, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Constantin von Sternberg, Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Ryan Walker.
Anne Montgomerie Traubel shared her husband's intellectual and political commitments throughout their marriage and continued to support them after his death. Many of the correspondents listed in the Horace Traubel Correspondence series also appear in Anne Montgomerie Traubel's correspondence.
While not himself a member of the Socialist party, Traubel, in his writings for the
Manuscripts of Traubel's writings, most of which were published in the
The Miscellany series contains material relating to the Society for Ethical Culture in Philadelphia which Horace Traubel helped found. Society members and other supporters represented in the Correspondence series include Felix Adler, Stanton Coit, Joseph and Mary Fels, Daniel Longaker, Cyrus Newlin Pierce, Charlotte Porter, William Mackintire Salter, Marshall E. Smith, Wayland H. Smith, and S. Burns Weston.
Walt Whitman named Horace Traubel as one of his three literary executors, along with Richard Maurice Bucke, whose correspondence can be found in the Horace Traubel Correspondence series, and Thomas Biggs Harned, Traubel's brother-in-law, whose correspondence is filed among the Family Papers. A separate collection of Harned's papers is also located in the Manuscript Division. The Traubel Papers contain letters exchanged with other Whitman scholars, and the Miscellany series contains a collection of records of the Walt Whitman Fellowship, a literary society dedicated to perpetuating the memory of “the Good Gray Poet.” The Horace Traubel Correspondence series contains letters of Fellowship officers and other Whitman associates as well as a number of foreign writers and scholars including Léon Bazalgette, Henry B. Binns, Daniel G. Brinton, John Burroughs, Ellen M. O'Connor Calder, Edward Carpenter, H. Buxton Forman, Herbert H. Gilchrist, John Johnston, John H. Johnston, William Sloane Kennedy, Otto Edward Lessing, Shigetaka Naganuma, Isaac Hull Platt, Gabriel Sarrazin, J. W. Wallace, George W. Whitman, Gustave Percival Wiksell, Frederick Wild, and Talcott Williams.
Selected correspondents from the Traubels' correspondence not mentioned above include Leonard Dalton Abbott, Joseph H. Allen, Truman H. Bartlett, Helen Campbell, John H. Clifford, James C. Craven, David Cummings, Clarence S. Darrow, William E. Davenport, Archie and Elsie Edington, Peter Eglinton, Amelia von Ende, Charles E. Feinberg, Clifton Joseph Furness, Charles G. Garrison, William N. Guthrie, Frederick and Marion Coates Hansen, John Haynes Holmes, Robert Green Ingersoll, Harold and Bertha Johnston, William H. Ketler, George Judson King, Oscar Lion, Leland Mason, Henry L. Mencken, Nathan and Lilian Mendelssohn, John Miley, Alberta Victoria Montgomery, Harrison S. Morris, William E. Mountain, Yone Noguchi, Carleton Eldredge Noyes, John Ormrod, Bliss Perry, William Lyon Phelps, Frank Putnam, John Quinn, Stephen M. Reynolds, Henry S. and Georgina Helen Saunders, Frank Shay, Frederic J. Shollar, Charles Sixsmith, Charles W. Slack, Thomas L. Snow, Harriet C. Sprague, Oscar L. Triggs, B. F. Underwood, Franklin H. Wentworth, Minnie Whiteside, and Charles Zueblin.
The 2003 Addition contains material arranged subsequent to the initial organization of the Traubel Papers. The series includes family papers, correspondence, literary material, and printed matter spanning the dates 1850-1979 which complement similar items in the original portion of the collection as well as separate collections of papers of Walt Whitman and Gertrude Traubel (1892- 1983).
The Walt Whitman material in the collection includes correspondence, manuscript drafts, and hand-drawn sketches of his memorial tomb. A lengthy prose manuscript in support of better working conditions for streetcar conductors employed by the Washington City Railroad is especially noteworthy.
Gertrude Traubel material comprising the largest section in the addition includes family papers, correspondence, speeches and writings, notes and notebooks, and printed matter. Gertrude Traubel shared her parents' commitment to Walt Whitman's memory and maintained an active correspondence with like-minded colleagues, documenting the evolution of Whitman scholarship.
Gertrude Traubel nurtured a continuing correspondence with many of her parents' friends and associates including Frank and Mildred Bain, Léon Bazalgette, Maurice Becker, Albert Boni, Eugene V. Debs, Theodore Debs, Charles E. Feinberg, George H. Hallett, Jr., John Haynes Holmes, William T. Innes, Bertha Johnston, John Johnston, Calder Johnstone, David Karsner, Rose Karsner, Oscar Lion, Ruth May, Laurens Maynard, Henry L. Mencken, Nathan and Lilian Mendelssohn, Harrison S. and Anna W. Morris, Stanley and Myrtis Muschamp, Shigetaka Naganuma, John and Elsie Ormrod, Jennie Patrick, Emma Haviland Platt, Isaac Hull Platt, Phillips Russell, Henry S. Saunders, Frank Shay, Alice and Amy Smith, Constantin von Sternberg, James Graham Phelps and Rose Pastor Stokes, J. W. Wallace, William English and Anna Strunsky Walling, Ralph W. and Marion Wescott, Minnie Whiteside, Frederick Wild, and Gustave Percival Wiksell. Other correspondents include Arthur Bullard, Ernestine Caliandro, Rockwell and Kathleen Kent, Marian MacDowell, Scott and Nellie Nearing, Joseph Niver, and Rose Strunsky.
Gertrude Traubel was a classically-trained singer and teacher who performed and taught locally in the Philadelphia area, and her papers include items pertinent to her professional and artistic career. A short memoir written by Anne Montgomerie Traubel recalls her first meeting with Walt Whitman.
The 2020 Addition contains contains the papers of Canadian Whitmanites Frank Bain (1875-1959) and Mildred Bain (1876-1972), friends and financial supporters of Horace Traubel. Materials in the addition span the dates 1904-1959 and comprise mostly correspondence between members of the Bain and Traubel families. The letters and postcards between Horace Traubel and Frank and Mildred Bain reflect the personal and intimate relationship between the three, while correspondence between Gertrude Traubel and the Bains document Gertrude's commitment to preserving her father's legacy during the 1950s. Other correspondence includes letters between the Bains and other scholars, reformers, and supporters of Horace Traubel. This includes correspondence between Frank Bain and potential subscribers and contributers to his "Traubel Fund," an annual subscription he created to raise money to support Horace Traubel's literary work. Finally, the addition contains five letters sent to Horace Traubel from Shigetaka Naganuma, Max Lapat (recalling his recent visit with Helen Keller), and subscribers to the
The 2020 Addition also contains printed matter, ephemera, and photographs related to Walt Whitman and Horace Traubel. Some of this material includes items Horace Traubel gifted to the Bains, such as a facsimile of a letter Whitman wrote about his 73rd birthday (which Whitman had originally given to Traubel) and eight color plate images, possibly removed from a 1913 edition of
The collection is arranged in ten series:
Diaries and journals kept by Horace Traubel and two travel journals kept by unidentified writers.
Arranged chronologically.
Letters, postcards, telegrams, financial and legal records, notes and notebooks, translations, printed matter, and miscellaneous items and enclosures sent and received by family members.
Arranged alphabetically by name of family member and chronologically therein.
Letters, postcards, telegrams, and miscellaneous enclosures sent and received by Anne Montgomerie Traubel.
Arranged alphabetically by name of correspondent and chronologically therein.
Letters, postcards, telegrams, and miscellaneous enclosures sent and received by Horace Traubel.
Arranged alphabetically by name of correspondent and chronologically therein.
Handwritten and typewritten manuscripts, correspondence, notes, proofs, contracts, royalty statements, signatures, printed copies, and miscellaneous items relating to the prose, poetry, books, plays, and speeches of Anne and Horace Traubel, as well as the works of other writers collected by the Traubels. Also includes Horace Traubel's diary published as
Arranged alphabetically by type of material under the writer's name.
Correspondence, handwritten and typewritten manuscripts, publishing material, financial records, proofs, printed matter, and miscellaneous items relating to the
Arranged alphabetically by type of material.
Correspondence, financial and legal records, manuscripts, notes and notebooks, scrapbooks (some containing letters), printed matter, cards, and invitations.
Arranged alphabetically by type of material.
Letters received, holograph manuscripts and notes, sketches of Whitman's tomb, printed matter, and miscellaneous items.
Arranged alphabetically by type of material and chronologically therein.
Letters exchanged between Horace and Anne Montgomerie Traubel and a letter from Traubel to his sister, Agnes Traubel Lychenheim.
Organized alphabetically by name of correspondent and arranged chronologically therein.
Letters, postcards, and miscellaneous enclosures sent and received by Horace and Anne Montgomerie Traubel.
Organized alphabetically by name of correspondent and arranged chronologically therein.
Handwritten and typewritten manuscripts, correspondence, notes, proofs, contracts, printed matter, and miscellaneous items relating to the books and writings of Horace Traubel and other writers collected by Traubel, including Walt Whitman.
Arranged alphabetically by type of material and chronologically therein.
Correspondence, notes and notebooks, address books, printed matter, scrapbooks, and miscellaneous items including a Walt Whitman cigar box.
Arranged alphabetically by type of material and chronologically therein.
Family papers, correspondence, speeches and writings, financial and legal records, notes and notebooks, printed matter, miscellaneous items, and files relating to the publication of
Arranged by type of material and chronologically therein.
Correspondence and postcards, largely between members of the Bain and Traubel families or the Bains and other supporters of Horace Traubel. Also includes printed matter, ephemera, and photographs related to Walt Whitman and Horace Traubel.
Arranged alphabetically by type of material.
Oversize material consisting of correspondence, literary manuscripts, and printed matter.
Organized and described according to the series, boxes, and folders from which the items were removed.