Rare Book Collections @ Princeton

From a descendant, the Library purchased the remaining personal collection of Noah Webster’s son-in-law, William Chauncey Fowler, professor, clergyman and legislator. The 311 titles come to a total of 392 volumes and include books on a wide variety of subjects as well as his personal, marked-up copies of his own works also ranging widely in subject, from anti-slavery to what sorts of books young people should read. Also included are two books formerly owned by his father in law, one of which, Jeremy Belknap’s American Biography (1794), has Webster’s annotation contradicting the author. In addition, because the Fowler family was a share holder in one of the earliest public libraries founded in the United States - the Book Company of Durham, Connecticut (founded 1733), they obtained a number of books from the Library’s stock when the company was dissolved in 1856 and the members voted “to divide the books by auction.” These are variously marked “Book Company of Durham, new library” or “Durham, new library” and include stock numbers (with date of accession as inscribed): 26, 35 (“1789”), 38, 45, 47, 71 (“1791”), 72-76 (“Jan. 3, 1792), 78 (“Jan. 1793”), 86 (“presented by Dr. Stiles, April 8, 1793”), 88 (“presented by Dr. Stiles, April 8, 1793”), 96, 97 (“A.D. 1795”), 101 (“A.D. 1795”), 108 (“1795”), 110 (“A. D. 1795”), 114 (“A.D. 1796”), 129 (“March 5, 1798”), 132, 142-144 (“1800”), 192 (“June 5th, 1812”), 199, 201, 202, 212 (“Jan’y, 1817”), 216, 224, 225, 229, 256, 257, 258, 279, and 286. One book with no stock number is marked “Ethosian Society, Durham, Conn.,” a debating society with a library known to have been formed in 1783 and dissolved in 1793. Few libraries of nineteenth century professors are traceable as a collection today. Equally few are gatherings of books known to have been in one of the thousands of social libraries active in ante-bellum America. Historians of reading are eager not only to know what those books were but to actually examine such documented survivors as these.
Email: ferguson@princeton.edu

A recent gift to the Library reminded me that I had first read about the Broadman Library in an old back issue of The New Yorker. Joseph Broadman (1883-1966) was a Manhattan medical doctor who eventually gathered more than 500,000 pamphlets, posters, periodicals, and newspapers relating to World War I and the unstable peace thereafter. He also developed a patented method for the preservation of wood pulp papers, chiefly newsprint. The story in The New Yorker was like other stories about his collecting — all either mentioned directly or alluded to common themes, namely, that, in the case of Joseph Broadman, collecting had become:

1. A pastime turned into a vocation. The theme here is unintended consequences; also, that fulfillment is found unexpectedly, rather than resulting from a series of conventional steps. Example: “Over twenty years ago Dr. Joseph Broadman of New York City, began the pursuit of an unique hobby. Shortly thereafter that unique hobby began the pursuit of Dr. Broadman.” — opening paragraph by Hayden Welles in 1935 article in New York University Alumnus. [See list of sources below for details.]

2. A private activity now conducted on a scale that makes it a public utility. Example: “Dr. Joseph Broadman of 141 West Forty-first Street, without any previous training in history or library work, without any realization of the magnitude of what he was attempting, has assembled this collection with brings exclamations from historians and librarians.” — paragraph two of a 1930 New York Times article “Novel War Library Grows From Hobby”

3. A lesson as to what our pubic priorities ought to be. Example: “It is our hope that some day this very valuable library will be on public display. It is a commentary on the times - that no money is available for a collection of information that could well be a vital force for peace.” — Editorial headnote to 1959 article on the Library by Broadman published in General Practice.

4. An activity that others will eventually “finally” tally. Example: In the 1935 NYU article, the author Welles closes by speculating: “It will be hard when Dr Broadman’s contributions to history are finally tallied to decide which is the greater. Will it be his Library on the World War …or will it be his paper preservative? Welles answers his own question “Probably the latter, for without the preservative, ravenous Time will slowly but irresistibly devour the Library.”

So what happened to the Broadman library?

For years, he tried to sell the collection. His efforts, starting in the 1930s, were directed at university libraries, such as Indiana, and Princeton. After the end of World War II, he renewed his efforts to place the collection by publishing a 35 page pamphlet entitled Broadman Library of World War I and World War II: Including the Years Intervening and Following. Its Inception, Growth, Contents, World Opinion.

Despite Broadman’s efforts, no one took his collection for many years, and one can only speculate on why this was so, as I do later in this note.

Eventually, late in life, in 1966, he gave the collection to a newly established Quaker institution on Long Island, the Friends World College. The college moved around the island several times and eventually settled on the North Shore in Lloyd Harbor. That is where the collection was last seen.

In the spring of 2006, I gathered the story of its last days from former college officials and from local town’s people. To quote my notes:

“I eventually reached Donald W. Smith of Greenport, NY who was on the board of trustees of the FWC in 1990-1991. (1991 was the year in which the FWC merged into Long Island University and became the Friends World Program. The merger had been brought on by a funding crisis.) He told me on April 2, 2006 that the Broadman Library was stored on the grounds in various buildings such as the second floor of the Barn and in some of the stables. He further said it had been offered around by FWC to a number of public libraries as well as to Swarthmore College. No one wanted it. Thus, he continued, when the remaining real estate of FWC at Lloyds Neck was sold in 1990, the grounds, buildings, and contents such as the Broadman Library, passed to the new owner.”

The FWC property was known as Livingston Manor. The new owner eventually pulled down all the outbuildings together with the main house, evidently ca. 1994-95. When the barn containing the Broadman Library was demolished, the contents too passed into oblivion.

Ironically, all that remains of the Broadman Library, as far as I can tell, are records about it, such as correspondence files at the New York Public Library, the FDR Library, Indiana University, even here at Princeton. Publications about the collection issued by Dr Broadman himself also remain. His collection has vanished.

Further reflection • Broadman tried to claim value for the collection by making it part of a category of value that had not been collected by traditional collectors whose goods are preserved by the workings of the antiquarian book market. Instead, and perhaps because of his professional training, he chose to make it a part of a category of value that was created by universities and research institutions. It is they — the professionals — who value breath, depth and equal opportunity for all viewpoints.

There were advantages and disadvantages to Broadman’s approach.

On the one hand, it brought him regard with those from whom he sought regard, such professional men as university presidents, historians, and diplomats.

On the other hand, he did not completely share their values. He challenged an emerging consensus among them regarding the use of microfilm as a means of dealing with the preservation of large twentieth century archival collections. Broadman challenged claims about the stability of microfilm as a satisfactory means for preservation of records. Evidence of the challenge comes from Broadman’s exchange of letters on this subject with Princeton librarian Julian Boyd. In a letter to Broadman dated November 29, 1941, Boyd wrote: “I have read your comments with much interest, though I regret to say with almost complete disagreement. … I am in most complete disagreement with your suggestion that the National Bureau of Standards has been under undue influence in its tests of films, …” Moreover, Broadman also insisted that his collection be preserved with his patented process. (Such a project would cost the host institution untold sums.)

In the end, it was not just lack of money preventing sale of the Broadman Library . For many years, there appears to have been insufficient funds of institutional good opinion, so that, after any money was spent, those in the institution could feel that their opinion had been validated. Just as Broadman wanted to feel better after adding to the Library — he said “There are hundreds of thousands of doctors, but there’s only one library like this” (1941 New Yorker article) — so those in an institution would want to feel better after acquiring the Broadman Library. It takes more than money to preserve a collection.

Another further reflection • The evidence is only suggestive, but I can not help but wonder if Broadman’s motivation for collecting was to accumulate a protective surrogate. Some examples: Official records state he was born in Austria and that German was his native language. The country in which he made his living and raised his family was anti-German. It was clear that he was defensive about his hertiage, as evidenced by a letter to the editor of The New York Times (September 18, 1924) protesting the Times editorial “The Steuben Society Bloc.” Broadman controverted many points, such as the article of the Versailles Treaty that fixed responsibility for the war on Germany. In reply, Broadman wrote “… the publication of the secret archives, Russian, German, Belgian, and Serbian, proves the fallacy of this charge.” In 1940-41, Broadman began issuing “Research Bulletins” with such titles as “Facts vs. Propaganda” and “Hitler, the Man of Honor …?” New York Herald Tribune reporter Barrett McGurn, in his article on Broadman, August 3, 1941, stated that Secretary of the Navy William Franklin “Frank” Knox responded to Broadman’s bulletins as “warning … the world situation leaves no room for complacency.” McGurn concluded that “Dr. Broadman was now stressing in his bulletins the need for America to use all its forces to make certain a repetition of the Allied victory over Germany.”

Sources

• Newspaper and periodical articles

“Novel War Library Grows from Hobby. Dr. Joseph Broadman’s Collection of Human Data on Conflict Called Best of Kind. Experts Praise It Highly. Contains Magazines, Newspapers, Clippings Costing Thousands - Several Colleges Seek to Buy It. Has Cost Thousands of Dollars. Untrained as Librarian. Fine War Library Grows from Hobby. Foot Notes Give Many Facts.” The New York Times, Sunday, July 20, 1930.
[available at NY Times archive 1851-1980]

“A Hobby That Became an Institution: the Story of the Broadman Library That Grew From a Handful of Newspaper Clippings Into a Collection of 400,000 Items and an Amazing Invention.” New York University Alumnus, vol. XV, no. 5, January, 1935.

“500, 000 Items in War Library Offered as Gift. Dr. Joseph Broadman, Who Collected Big Work, Will Donate to Any Institution That Agrees to Preserve It.” The New York Herald Tribune, September 8, 1938, page 10.

“Library.” The New Yorker, October 4, 1941, page 15-16. [available at The New Yorker archive]

“One-Man, 50-Ton War Library Wins Renown. Doctor’s Collection, Begun in Pockets, Now Arsenal of Facts Against Nazis.” The New York Herald Tribune, August 3, 1941.

“Dr. Broadman, 83, Library Creator. Author of Book on Curative Role for Bee Venon Dies.” The New York Times, February 26, 1966, page 17.
[available at NY Times archive 1851-1980]

• Pamphlets

William Steward Ayars. Broadman Library of World War I and World War II: Including the Years Intervening and Following. Its Inception, Growth, Contents, World Opinion. (New York: Broadman Library Foundation, 1948) 34 pages. Includes several photographs. [Copy of the brochure is at Mudd Library in AC123 (Library Records), series Librarian’s Records, sub-series Boyd, old box number 148]

Joseph Broadman. The Broadman Library on “War, Peace and International Relations” (New York, 1959). 8 pages. Reprinted from the October 1959 issue of General Practice.

[Related work] Joseph Broadman. The Scientific Preservation of Perishable Papers; A Comparison of the Various Processes of Preservation of Originals and Photographic Reproduction. (New York, Broadman process, inc. [1941]). Includes photograph of Dr. Broadman reproduced above. Broadman is pointing to parcels labeled “Letters to Editors.” This category was one of 12 major sub-divisions of the Library as listed in “Section B” of the Ayars 1948 pamphlet. The other sections were: Newspapers, Indices, Scrap Books (about 1500), Propaganda—Pamphlets and Leaflets, Books (about 3000), Official Records, Posters, Cartoons (several thousand), Scrap Book Index (about 60,000 cards), Periodicals, and Miscellaneous.

• Archival

Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY • President’s Official File #4825, “Broadman, Dr. Joseph, 1939-45,” contains 71 pages (approx. 20 letters and memoranda) • Samuel I. Rosenman Papers. Folder titled, “Broadman Library of the World War.” It contains 52 pages which consist of some 21 letters and memoranda between March 1942 and November 1943 and attachments. These papers included an 8 page document, “Brief and Incomplete Description of Contents of the Broadman Library.” Broadman and FDR discussed donation of selected runs of periodicals for the library at Hyde Park.

Indiana University. Archives. Bloomington, IN. • File on Broadman in the papers of President Herman Wells, 1938-1943.

New York Public Library. New York, NY. • File on Broadman in the administrative archives of the Library: RG6 (Central Administration Central Administration - Director - Lydenberg, Hopper, and Beals - General Correspondence — Box 7)

Swarthmore College. Friends Historical Library. Swarthmore, PA. • Records of the Friends World College. (RG 4/ 082) Minutes of the Board of Trustees. Vol. 11-13 (April 1971 - January 1974). The minutes of the Trustees Executive Council for August 10, 1972, page 10, “Broadman Library. As previously reported, the Broadman Library collection (an early gift to the college of documents for a peace library comprising a large collection of materials from World War I through World War II). has been badly damaged by vandalization last year of the Nike building in which it was stored. Through the efforts of Francis Koster of C.W. Post College, their chief librarian had taken a look and found it still valuable. That college may help us get funds and a place for it. A further report will be welcomed.”

Princeton University. Archives (Mudd Library). Princeton, NJ. • Library Records (AC123). Sub-series for the papers of librarian Julian Boyd.

The survival of books occurs under contested conditions. In fact, you could say that the whole life cycle of books - creation, production, distribution, use, survival - occurs under contested conditions. Clearly then if the book historian has any job, his or her job is to investigate and understand those contested conditions. Since my work as a curator is chiefly about insuring the survival of books, I’m curious about the back-story to my work, namely, whatever relates to the story over the years regarding the survival of books and the contests surrounding survival.

Lately, I have been trying to understand the world of book collectors and dealers in the United States during the middle of the 19th century. I’ve picked those years because I’ve discovered that they represent a “take off stage” in the arc of the practice of bibliophily in this country. A number of bibliophilic writers maintain that in the US during the period from ca 1885 to ca 1930 there occurred sustained high practice in book collecting, often referred to at the “Golden Age.” It was an age marked by such titan collectors as Henry Huntington and J. Pierpont Morgan, funded by wealth produced the American economy, which by 1900 had become the world’s largest, a position it has held down to the present. It was also an age marked by an unprecedented out-pouring of collectible goods from England and other countries of Europe. One factor precipitating the English flow was the change in the entailment laws, instituted to help English nobles cover the shortfall in income resulting from reduced agricultural production of their lands. The change allowed them to sell manorial property, and the art and books therein were among the first to go. Other factors, such as sales done to meet rising death duties, sustained this flow for years to come. The general contours of the “Golden Age” are pretty well known - there are a handful of histories about this period; there are memoirs of dealers, collectors, accounts of auctions, in goodly abundance. In fact, the period has been institutionalized by the several collector’s clubs founded then and still surviving, the most famous of which is the Grolier Club in New York. The modern era in special collections in university libraries traces back to this period, as does that evidently uniquely American collegiate, bibliophilic institution, the undergraduate book-collecting contest.

My interest is in those years just before this so-called “Golden Age” for several reasons. I have a number of questions: Books, and collectors, and money were around before the t the so-called “Golden Age,” so why didn’t it occur earlier? We know the mores and methods of the generations of the “Golden Age,” so what did their predecessors do that was the same or different? What were the contests relating to the survival of books during these mid-century years? Unlike the story of the Golden Agers, there’s no place to turn to for an explanation of these mid-century years. With no place to turn, I decided to answer these questions on my own.

My hunt for the answers to these questions required and still requires that I look at a number of sources: chiefly, whatever documents I can find by collectors, dealers, or libraries of these years, or about the collectors, dealers and libraries of the mid 19th century. Consequently, I am reading the following:

• newspaper accounts of auction sales, collector’s libraries, stories about the book trade (such as W.C. Prime’s account of bookseller William Gowan’s cellar), etc.

• book trade journals, such as Joseph Sabin’s The American Bibliopolist (1869-1877). [Some vol. available at Google Books .]

• auction catalogues, in particular their front matter, or owner’s annotations. - the Poinier copy of the Rice catalogue (1870) is my best example.

• correspondence - precious little remains in the way of dealer’s correspondence (T. H. Morrell, and then a few others)

• diaries of collectors - see William Templeton Strong

In short, I’m on the hunt for whatever I can find as evidence. Both findings and evidence are very scattered, discontinuous, and scarce. Already emerging are some fragmentary particulars, which I group into three parts as follows: 1) regarding values and mores, 2) further themes and questions centering chiefly around norms, hierarchies, and the notion of gift, and 3) themes and questions yet to be investigated much further, especially the roles of the various agents

Values and norms of 19th cent collectors

• To be “Choice and Select” — “William Gowans, a bookseller who knew American literature better than most of his colleagues, was critical of [Albert Gorton] Greene’s ‘prodigious congregation of dirty second hand hymn books.’ [footnote 1] ‘To put them into a private collection is like choking an elegantly furnished parlor with a quantity of broken and dilapidated furniture, filling up space, and so obscuring the useful and ornamental piece.” [footnote 2]. These quotes from page 16 of Roger E. Stoddard, “C. Fiske Harris, Collector of American Poetry and Plays,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Volume 57, First Quarter, 1963, 14-32.

• Understanding value — Gowans further criticizes Greene: “Had the judge been a more liberal buyer, his books to-day would many of them have realized ten times the cost. He seemed to think a rise in the price of any book was preposterous; and such a conviction prevented him from making many valuable acquisitions.” — page 17 in Roger E. Stoddard, “C. Fiske Harris, Collector of American Poetry and Plays,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Volume 57, First Quarter, 1963, 14-32. Note: preposterous = contrary to the order of nature, or to reason or common sense.

• Value of the quotidian — In March 1875, C. Fiske Harris sent out copies of his Index to American Poetry and Plays in the Collection of C. Fiske Harris (Providence: Printed for Private Distribution, 1874). It listed more than 4,000 volumes of poetry, plays, and songs written by Americans. William Cullen Bryant remarked to Harris “Your work, Index to American Poetry and Plays, has amazed me by showing me what multitudes of persons on our side of the Atlantic have wasted their time in writing verses in our language.” [footnote 3]

• Many vs. the few —- “The Astor Library is truly a noble institution. … I hope it will be taken care of, but in the hands of the millions it will soon be tarnished. Books fare bad enough in a College library but when thrown open to Tom, Dick & Harry in a such a City as N[ew] Y[or]K. Heaven save the mark …” John Carter Brown to John Russell Bartlett. 15 December 1853. Papers of John Russell Bartlett, JCB.

“I would prefer a half dozen gems of the first water books beyond criticism, to a cartload of unimportant books - A sale of such richness in Americana may never take place again.” - John Nicholas Brown (age 23) to John Russell Bartlett. 7 January 1884. From Dresden, re: the Henry C. Murphy sale, 3-8 March 1884. Papers of John Russell Bartlett, JCB.

Themes and questions relating to norms, hierarchies, and the notion of gift

•With autograph collecting during the nineteenth century there was the assumption that they had an almost magical utility for mirroring directly the soul of the writer. Another way of putting this idea is that autographs offered an intimacy not reproducible any other way. Poe satirized the credulity of those who believed this proposition. That he satirized testifies to how widespread this belief was. See his “Autography” in Graham’s Magazine (Nov. 1841- Jan. 1842). Clearly at stake here are questions relating to norms and hierarchies: what’s collectible and what’s not, and what categories validate something as collectible.

•More on 19th century thinking about collecting — There is evidence that some then considered collecting to be a process of recovery - the process of collocating what belongs together because there’s a pattern which it is our task to come to realize. This is comparable to intuiting Providence by careful study of nature and nature’s patterns. The implication is that collecting is akin to a moral duty. This was the kind of thinking behind a college collecting publications of alumni, or locals putting together the works of a town’s literary lights. Giving a material form to “genius” was considered the right thing to do. The lowly physical acts of gathering material objects served higher, perhaps spiritual purposes.

•Clearly there are hierarchies among and embedded in collectibles - how do these get established, why are they necessary? I suggest one answer to the question about why hierarchies are necessary — it is because of the “gift economy” aspect of collecting, that is, collecting is done inside an exchange economy, but collecting is not, in the end, really about exchange of cash for goods, but goods for esteem. In a gift economy, the point of exchange is not to tie off relationships, to complete them, but rather to re-enforce them, to continue their binding nature.

•One very important aspect of the “gift economy” was literal exchanges between collectors. I am not precisely sure what all was involved here, but it seems to involve passing one’s duplicates to another in exchange for their duplicates. In autograph collecting, duplicate had a special meaning, yet to be fully determined.

•Genesis story - It seems that by the by the end of the century, it was a commonplace for a collector to have a “genesis story” - some sort of narrative which served to mark out the beginning of the endeavor. Another variant on the genesis story was the tale of the first practitioner, such as the Rev. William Sprague being the first collector of autographs in the US. (How could that be proved?) Such a genesis story may not be the real genesis story, but whatever was invented served the need. Where did the need come from? Perhaps as basic as having an individual having personal name in order to function in a society. The genesis story expanded by century’s end into the collector’s memoir. Early memoirs such as Henry Stevens’s is fraught with struggles with “egoism” or “egotism,” which I take to mean a kind of behavior able to undermine the “gift economy” or “love of man” (philanthropic) aspect of collecting.

•The making of privately illustrated or unique books was considered noble because it was creating a kind of gift. Many “illustrators” intended to leave them to their children as an important legacy. The gift economy was in high contrast to the growing capitalist economy of the nineteenth century.

The dictates of the gift economy may be another reason why Princeton librarian E. C. Richardson used the term “Kept Books.” Valuable gifts were included in that group, so the term connoting the role of gifts as books kept as bonds of relationship.

Also under the dictates of the gift economy, “exhibition” takes on another meaning. It is the making visible of what was or is invisible — the outward showing of an inward bond. And, so the exhibition room in a library is not only where you can see rarities, it is also a court of good will.

Note: change later overlays earlier terminology — the term “Treasure Room” — the term in wide use by the 1920s — is from the Greek “thesauros” meaning store or hoard. The denotation is possession rather than a state of being (viz. exhibiting, keeping).

Yet to be investigated much further — the roles of the agents

•Roles of those connected with the process of collecting and, in particular, those who created dialog about collecting — in particular, the <> Role of dealers (such as, Joseph Sabin and his American Bibliopolist, or Charles De F. Burns, who published American Antiquarian: a quarterly journal devoted to the interests of collectors of autographs, paper money, portraits, &c.) <> Role of public interpreters (such as Charles Dibdin, Herman Ludewig (bibliographer), John Russell Bartlett, or the newspaper reporters who wrote chiefly about the public auctions) <> Role of auctioneers (goods were pushed and pulled into the American market from abroad — dealers imported from London and auction these goods — carrying inventory over time was costly, so the auction created a sense of abundance without long term costs — how did they calibrate what to sell? Perhaps the sale of Charles Lamb’s books in New York in 1848 is a useful case study) <> Role of collectors (gossip that they exchanged with each other)

What does role mean here? There’s more than an exchange of goods. Both as a providing agent and an exchange agent for expert information, these men brought to light what had, so the story went, been hidden in darkness and they showed its relevance for current felt needs, such as keeping up with the “aesthetic wave” or preserving what was vanishing, such as the wave of collecting following on after two of the most important last of the Revolutionary generation, Adams and Jefferson, died in 1826. That is how the story went at that time. I sense a story hidden yet deeper, based in a value system understood at the time, but only uncertainly understood today.

1 Gowans. Catalogue of American Books, for Sale at the Affixed Prices, New York, 1864, No. 27, p.26

2 Idem.

3 Bryant’s letter of 12 Mar. 1875, quoted by John C. Stockbridge in The Anthony Memorial: A Catalogue of the Harris Collection of American Poetry with Biographical and Bibliographical Notes, Providence, 1886, p. xi.