The Manuscripts Division is pleased to announce the recent acquisition of the papers of William Jovanovich (1920-2001), American publisher and author, who led Harcourt Brace Jovanovich from 1954 until 1991. Jovanovich’s papers contain nearly two hundred author and publisher files, including an extensive file on the famous aviator and writer Charles A. Lindbergh (1902-74), as well as personal and professional correspondence, writings and lectures, awards, family memorabilia, interviews, press clippings, business files, photographs, and other materials regarding Jovanovich’s professional activities and creative pursuits. The papers are the generous gift of Alexandra O. Fellowes, as executor of the Estate of Martha Jovanovich, widow of William Jovanovich. This important gift complements the Manuscripts Division’s extensive holdings of the archives of major American publishing houses and literary journals, papers of publishers and editors, and archives of literary agencies and writers’ organizations.

Jovanovich was born in a coal-mining camp in Louisville, Colorado, to parents of Montenegrin and Polish origin. He learned English in elementary school, completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Colorado, and studied English and American literature at Harvard University. His graduate studies were interrupted by World War II, when he left school to serve as an officer in the U. S. Navy. After the war, Jovanovich returned briefly to his studies at Columbia University. In need of a job to support his wife and young son, he left school again in 1947 to join Harcourt Brace & Company as a traveling college textbook salesman. He was promoted to head of Harcourt’s school division in 1953 and became president of the company the following year at age 34. In 1970, he became chief executive officer, and the firm was renamed Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Jovanovich was an innovative figure in the publishing industry. He popularized the use of colorful illustrations in textbooks, and he is credited with starting the first imprint (under Kurt and Helen Wolff), now a common feature at many leading publishing houses today. At the same time, he made unconventional business decisions, such as relocating the publisher’s headquarters from Manhattan to Orlando and purchasing Sea World marine parks. Under his direction, Harcourt became one of the largest textbook publishers, while continuing to publish trade books, including works by internationally known authors. Over the course of Jovanovich’s leadership, Harcourt was transformed from a small publishing house into a diversified company with annual sales of over a billion dollars. In the late 1980s, the company took on massive debt in a successful but ultimately damaging effort to thwart a hostile takeover by the British publisher Robert Maxwell. This led to Jovanovich’s resignation as president in 1990.

Authors represented in the collection include Svetlana Alliluyeva (see photo below), Hannah Arendt, Matija Bećković, Sylvia Beach, Arthur C. Clarke, Edward Dahlberg, Milovan Djilas, e. e. cummings, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Hiram Haydn, Helen Hayes, Irving Howe, Jerzy Kosiński, Anita Loos, Marshall McLuhan, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Lewis Mumford, V. S. Pritchett, Erich Maria Remarque, Richard Rovere, Carl Sandburg, William Saroyan, Vasilēs Vasilikos, Andy Warhol, Leonard Woolf, and others. His papers document his lifelong interest in promoting the works of Yugoslav authors.

An extensive series of files on Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh consists largely of editorial drafts, research, and photographs for Lindbergh’s posthumous Autobiography of Values (1978), which Jovanovich edited and published. Materials related to The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (1970), correspondence with Anne Morrow Lindbergh and other members of the Lindbergh family, and biographical writings by others about Charles Lindbergh are also included. Of note is a group of photographs, correspondence, and research materials, collected by New York Times reporter Alden Whitman. These document Lindbergh’s work with primitive tribes and his conservation efforts in the Philippines in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In addition to publishing the works of others, Jovanovich also wrote and published several books of his own, including the essay collection Now, Barabbas (1964), the novel The World’s Last Night (1990), the memoir The Temper of the West (2003), and several others. He died in San Diego, California, in 2001 at age 81. Researchers interested in learning more about the William Jovanovich Papers should consult the finding aid. For information about using the papers, contact rbsc@princeton.edu. Jovanovich’s author and publisher files are stored onsite, while his own writings and personal papers are offsite. Please consult with the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections about having offsite materials recalled to Firestone Library, a process that normally takes 48–72 hours notice.

William Jovanovich in 1977

Svetlana Alliluyeva letters from Princeton, N.J

A generous grant from the Virginia and Richard Stewart Memorial Fund, through Princeton University’s Council of the Humanities, has made it possible for the Princeton University Library to expand online digital access to its extensive holdings of Islamic manuscripts. More than 1,200 digitized Islamic manuscripts are now available for study online in the Islamic Manuscripts Collection of the Princeton University Digital Library (PUDL).

Professor Michael A. Cook, Class of 1943 University Professor of Near Eastern Studies, notes that “Princeton’s great collections of Islamic manuscripts, acquired to support research in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, will be increasingly available to scholars all over the world, as the Library continues to digitize its holdings.” The Library has the largest collection of Islamic manuscripts in North America and one of the finest such collections in the Western world. Holdings include nearly 10,000 volumes of Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and other manuscripts of the predominantly Islamic world, written in Arabic script. Approximately two-thirds of them came to Princeton in 1942 as part of the Garrett Collection, donated by Robert Garrett (1875–1961), Class of 1897. Building on this extraordinary collection, the Library has continued to acquire Islamic manuscripts by gift and purchase. Now there are approximately 3,000 additional Islamic manuscripts with New Series and Third Series designations. Text manuscripts on virtually every aspect of Islamic learning, both religious and secular, are the chief strength. Princeton’s holdings also include Persian and Mughal illuminated manuscripts and miniatures. Other collections include European manuscripts written in Arabic script or containing translations. Arabic papyri are separately housed in the Princeton Papyri Collections. All of these holdings are in the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, within Firestone Library.

The Stewart Memorial Fund grant has made it possible to digitize over more than a thousand additional Islamic text manuscripts from existing gray-scale microfilm, which was produced in a Library project over 35 years ago with funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Title II-C. For the present project, the Library selected nearly 400 volumes, chiefly New Series manuscripts containing texts on Shia law and theology; as well as texts relating to other non-Sunni sects, such as the Druze and Kharijites. In addition, more than 750 other manuscripts on all subjects were digitized from the Garrett Yahuda series, acquired in 1942. The newly digitized manuscripts account for more than a tenth of the Library’s Islamic manuscript holdings. This project has been accomplished through the collaborative efforts of the Library’s Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Technical Services, Systems Office, and Digital Studio. Principal access to the newly digitized manuscripts will be through links in the Voyager bibliographical records for each manuscript. In addition, links to digitized manuscripts will be added to the Princeton Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts.

Generous funding from the Magic Project, Princeton, made it possible nearly a decade ago to digitize approximately 220 manuscripts in full color and put them in the Digital Library, which went online in 2009. A Google search for the Princeton Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts generates 21,000 “hits” worldwide, from North America, through western Europe and the Near East, to Southeast Asia. Among those who have linked to the Princeton site are innumerable Near Eastern Studies programs, research centers, library e-resource guides, e-collections and open-access resources, and Near Eastern Studies scholars’ personal web pages. It is anticipated that the Digital Library will continue to grow as the Library digitizes additional manuscripts, most often in response to photoduplication requests by individual non-Princeton researchers. In all, the Princeton collections have been a world resource for nearly a century through research visits to the Library or by remote use (photoduplication and most recently digitization).

For information about Princeton holdings of Islamic manuscripts, contact the staff of Public Services.

Bookplate of Robert Garrett, Class of 1897