Converted to EAD3 : Encoded Archival Description (EAD), Version 3 : Release: 1.1.1 : Release Date: 2019-12-16. Validating against latest version of schema.
Contact information: https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mss.contact
Catalog Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/mm2011085601
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 F. Holland Day, photographer and publisher, were given to the Library of Congress by the Norwood Historical Society, Norwood, Massachusetts, in 2011.
The papers of F. Holland Day were arranged and described in 2012 by Laura J. Kells with the assistance of Tammi Taylor. The finding aid was updated in 2023 by Maria Farmer as part of a division-wide remediation project by the Inclusive Description Working Group.
Some photographs have been transferred to the Library's Prints and Photographs Division where they are identified as part of these papers.
Microfilm of a significant portion of the F. Holland Day Papers is available at the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art.
Related collections in the Manuscript Division include the papers of Louise Imogen Guiney. The Louise Imogen Guiney Collection in the Prints and Photographs Division contains photographs by F. Holland Day.
The status of copyright in the unpublished writings of F. Holland Day is governed by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U.S.C.).
The papers of F. Holland Day 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, F. Holland Day Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The papers of Fred Holland Day (1864-1933) span the years 1793-2010, with the bulk of the material dating from 1883 to 1933. They document the life and activities of the photographer and publisher who was part of the American Arts and Crafts movement in the 1890s. Day co-founded the publishing firm Copeland and Day and was a leading figure in the pictorialist movement of photography. The papers are organized into four series: Family and Personal File, Alphabetical File, Miscellany, and Oversize.
The Family and Personal File contains letters written by Anna Smith Day and Lewis Day to their only child, Fred, and his letters to them. These include letters F. Holland Day wrote to his father as a boy in 1879 while he spent several months in Denver, Colorado, and his letters to his parents while on his first trip to Europe following his graduation from school in 1883. His travel journal from that trip is filed with the small group of diaries in this series. The other diaries date from the last ten years of his life, when he was homebound and in ill health. Other personal items include childhood memorabilia, school papers, and photographs of classmates from Chauncy Hall School in Boston.
The Alphabetical File makes up the largest portion of Day's papers and covers many aspects of his life. Arranged by name or topic, these files cover his work as a publisher, his photography and interaction with major figures in the field of photography, his philanthropic activities and relationships with a group of urban youth he met through his efforts with settlement houses in Boston, his chalet on the coast of Maine, and his varied interests including the poet John Keats, books, local history and genealogy, and horticulture. The series contains his extensive correspondence with photographers, authors, artists, clients, merchants, young people he befriended and assisted, and friends. Day's connection to a group of artists and intellectuals in Boston that included Herbert Copeland, Ralph Adams Cram, Louise Imogen Guiney, and Bertram Grovenor Goodhue is documented in their correspondence and in files relating to the group the Visionists, the literary magazine,
Among the Miscellany series are letterbooks containing letterpress copies of Day's outgoing correspondence dating from 1884 to 1894. A group of writings by Day includes pieces entitled “Art and the Camera,” “Sacred Subjects in Photography,” and “Is Photography Art?,” and drafts of pieces he wrote for the Visionist's literary magazine
The collection is arranged in four series:
Catalog Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/mm2011085601
Correspondence, diaries, notes, financial receipts, school papers, photographs, memorabilia, and other papers.
Organized into family papers and a personal file, then by type of material, and therein chronologically.
Correspondence, notes, printed matter, photographs, and other papers.
Arranged alphabetically by name of person, organization, or topic and therein chronologically.
Letterbooks of letters sent, loose correspondence, writings, notes, and scrapbooks.
Arranged alphabetically by type of material and therein chronologically.
Genealogical charts and printed matter.
Arranged and described according to the series, containers, and folders from which the items were removed.