Holland\u27s Informants: The Construction of Josiah Holland\u27s \u27Life of Abraham Lincoln\u27

Abraham Lincoln\u27s coffin had lain in the receiving vault in Springfield\u27s Oak Ridge Cemetery for less than three weeks when a dapper, walrus-mustachioed New Englander stepped off the train and checked into Springfield\u27s St. Nicholas Hotel. He was Josiah Gilbert Holland, one-time editor (and still part owner) of the Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican, a nationally popular writer of advice books, and (what would turn out to be most memorably) part of a small circle of admirers and encouragers of an unknown Amherst poet named Emily Dickinson. None of those attributes, however, provided the slightest qualification for the task that brought him to the Illinois namesake of his hometown, which was the writing of a biography of Abraham Lincoln. Holland had not known Lincoln personally—had never even met him casually. Notwithstanding those deficits, Holland produced a landmark Lincoln biography, the first of any substantial length as a biography, the first with any aspirations to comprehensiveness, and a best-seller of 100,000 copies that was published in several languages. It was precisely his lack of personal acquaintance with Lincoln that brought him to Springfield ( in search of original and authentic material for the work ), and he came away with some of the most important informant materials any early Lincoln biographer would gather. Holland would use them to create the first life of the inner Lincoln, setting the stage for a genre of Lincoln studies that remains compelling and fruitful to this day and producing a biography that Paul Angle ranked by far the best of the early Lincoln biographies. [excerpt

Voltaire\u27s Convincement

The aim of this essay is to trace the evolution of Voltaire\u27s perspective toward Quakers and Quakerism during the course of his life. The record begins when in 1726 he was forced into exile and chose to go to England. In the course of his three-year stay there, he wrote letters to his friend-letters which were published in 1733 in English under the title \u27Letters Concerning the English Nation\u27 and in French with the title \u27Lettres Philosophiques\u27. Four of the 25 letters are devoted to Quakerism. We endeavour to depict, through his writing, Voltaire\u27s changing attitude toward Quakerism from one of mild disdain�� through ambivalence and fmally to outright admiration. This unfolding begins with a summary of his letters on Quakers and proceeds to a description of French attitudes toward Quakerism in the early 18th century. The essay culminates in an account of miscellaneous reactions to Voltaire\u27s letters and eventually to what we feel was his \u27convincement\u27, as this is reflected in his later writings

Erik Satie’s Socrate (1918), Myths of Marsyas, and un style dépouillé

In arguing that underneath the placid, 'stripped-down' style of Socrate there lurks a hidden violence, this essay does not focus on Satie's compositional process, documented in his notebooks; instead, it examines Socrate's performance history and the creation of the work's libretto, which the composer completed before sketching his musical ideas. Satie's novel selection and setting of the text is critical to this reading. The author examines how Satie reinterprets the violent myth of Marsyas and Apollo in the first movement, and how he ruminates on Socrates's dying words in the last movement. Understanding the ideas and events that led to the creation of Satie's enigmatic masterpiece allows us to view Socrate's portrayal of Plato's dialogues as part of a project of dépouillement, a neoclassical aesthetic that sought to strip down musical material in favor of an ascetic aesthetic uniting musical and moral Hellenism. This reading of Socrate allows us to reexamine the early 20th-century style dépouillé and to place Socrate at the center of debates on Socrates, Hellenism, and morality

MAYS, Benjamin

The papers of Benjamin E. Mays (1895-1984) provide a glimpse into the life of the renowned educator, Baptist preacher, college president and civil rights advocate. The bulk of the papers range from the 1920s to the 1980s covering his extensive career in various roles at Howard University, Morehouse College and on the Atlanta Board of Education among many others. The papers consist of 217 cubic feet of material and include nine series; Personal and Family Papers, Correspondence, Organizational Affiliations, Speeches and Other Writings, Photos, Audio/Visual Materials, Academic Regalia, Certificates/Awards/Artifacts and Subject Files. The papers were donated in four installations by Dr. Benjamin Mays and the initial deposit was received on March of 1976 by Dr. Michael Winston, former Director of the MSRC

Spartan Daily, April 18, 1945

Volume 33, Issue 116https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/3596/thumbnail.jp

Memories of Mary Ellen Rudin

An invited collective remembrance celebrating Mary Ellen Rudin's lif