In the nineteenth century, the U.S. Census not only tracked population growth, but also gathered vital statistics about the nation’s economic life. For the Tenth U.S. Census (1880), special agents were employed to collect data on iron and steel manufacture, coal mining, petroleum drilling and refining, and other industries. As a surveyor with the United States Geological Survey (U.S.G.S.), founded in 1879, Bayard Taylor Putnam (1854-1886) compiled mining statistics for the 1880 Census. His work is documented in correspondence and field notes in the Bayard Taylor Putnam Family Papers, 1870–1934 (C1463), a recent addition to the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. 

Bayard Taylor Putnam was the son of George Palmer Putnam (1814–1872), founder of the publishing firm G.P. Putnam’s Sons, and Victorine Haven Putnam (1824-1891). Bayard Taylor Putnam decided not to go into the family’s New York publishing business, and instead became a geological surveyor for the U.S.G.S. Division of Mining Geology. Putnam worked under Raphael Pumpelly (1837–1923), the division chief appointed Special Agent of the Census Office in charge of gathering coal mining statistics.

As Expert Special Agent for the 1880 Census, Putnam was sent to several parts of the country, including Michigan, northern New Jersey, Kentucky, and the Far West to survey iron and coal mining. Around 1881, he became involved with the Northern Pacific Railroad’s Northern Transcontinental Survey. Organized by Pumpelly, this survey (parts of which were also included in the 1880 Census) collected information on the topography and economy of the Dakotas, Montana, and Washington territories in order to identify mineral resources near the railroad lines.

Letters relating to Putnam’s survey work are primarily those from Pumpelly that were sent while Putnam was out in the field. Three volumes contain detailed geological and mineralogical field notes, as well as sketches of maps, mines, plats, plans, and cross sections, document his work in Michigan and northern New Jersey (including the surrounding areas of New York and Pennsylvania) as well as his time surveying mines in Montana for the Northern Transcontinental Survey.

The Bayard Taylor Putnam Family Papers also relate to the patented chart holder that Putnam invented for sailing and contain correspondence by several family members, particularly his wife, Grace Sanderson Thacher Putnam (1855–1900). Most of the letters to Grace, which date from the time of Bayard’s death in 1886 until Grace’s own death fourteen years later, are those she received from her close friend, Bishop Henry Codman Potter, who was the seventh Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. Letters relating to Bayard’s daughter, Mary Putnam, are of particular interest as they document a contentious period within the history of the Putnam family and G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Discussing the family’s stock in and ownership of the publishing company, the correspondence relates to the recent merger of G.P. Putnam’s Sons with Minton, Balch & Co., (1930) whereupon the owners of the latter became the majority stockholders.

For more about the Bayard Taylor Putnam Family Papers, contact rbsc@princeton.edu. Researchers interested in learning more about G.P. Putnam’s Sons can access the George Palmer Putnam Papers (C0685) and George Haven Putnam Papers (C1350), which are also part of the Manuscripts Division.

Raphael Pumpelly, Letter to Bayard Taylor Putnam concerning New Jersey mining, February, 16, 1880.

The Samuel Comfort Family Papers (C0407), in the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections,  have been recently reprocessed, and the finding aids is now online (http://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/C0407). Most important are the papers of Samuel Comfort (1837–1933), a Union officer during the U.S. Civil War, which is well documented through his extensive correspondence with family, friends, and fellow officers. The papers include Comfort’s diary from August 1864 to May 1865, official documents, muster rolls, and photographs.

It was around this time 150 years ago at Camp Couch in Philadelphia that Union officer Samuel Comfort was solidifying the core of his all-volunteer independent cavalry unit, Company “L” of the 20th Cavalry Regiment, 181st Pennsylvania Volunteers. Comfort began recruiting (and financing) his company the previous summer, spurred on by General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania.

This was Comfort’s second military stint in the Civil War. Previously, in the fall of 1861, he was selected to be a part of “Anderson Troop,” another independent Pennsylvania unit, which served as body guards to Major General D. C. [Don Carlos] Buell. After the Battle of Shiloh, April 6–7, 1862, Comfort became disabled by typhoid fever and was honorably discharged before reenlisting in June 1863. Stationed along the Shenandoah Valley, the 20th Pennsylvania Regiment took part in several key battles, including the Battle of New Market (May 15, 1864). Comfort was promoted to the rank of major in March 1865 when the 20th  Regiment became involved in the pursuit of Confederate forces that led to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House. Comfort was mustered out and honorably discharged from military service in July 1865.

The Samuel Comfort Family Papers also document Comfort’s time after the war as a foreign representative for Standard Oil Company, a predecessor of Exxon. It was while living abroad that Comfort’s daughter, Emma, met her husband, Harry Maule Crookshank. Descended from a distinguished military and political Scotch-Irish family, Crookshank was a decorated physician and surgeon who served as British Controller-General of the Daira Sanieh Administration in Egypt from 1897 to 1907. Previous to this appointment, Crookshank was a surgeon with the British Red Cross Society, and served in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) and the Serbo-Turkish War (1876–1878). Crookshank is documented in the Samuel Comfort Family Papers through both personal and professional correspondence, official documents, ephemera, and photographs.

Harry Frederick Comfort Crookshank, the son of Harry and Emma Comfort Crookshank, is also represented in the collection, though modestly, through a few letters and photographs. A distinguished World War I veteran, Harry was a British Conservative politician who served as Minister of Health from 1951 to 1952, Leader of the House of Commons from 1951 to 1955, and Lord Privy Seal from 1952 to 1955. Of special note is a letter from Crookshank to his family written during the Battle of the Somme (September 14, 1916) as well as a letter from Winston Churchill (December 7, 1954).

For more information about the Samuel Comfort Family Papers and about the Manuscript Division’s extensive holdings of personal papers pertaining to the Civil War, contact rbsc@princeton.edu

(Left) Letter from Comfort to his father about his involvement in the Battle of Appomattox Court House, April 10,1865. (Right) Samuel Comfort.

The Princeton University Library is pleased to announce that it has digitized and put online Louis-Alexandre Berthier’s manuscript maps of the United States in the final years of the American Revolution. The 111 numbered maps and related journals are Berthier’s record of the 680-mile overland march of the French army of some 5,750 men under Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, from Newport, Rhode Island, to Yorktown, Virginia, during the summer and early autumn of 1781, and the return march of the French Army from Virginia to Boston, July–December 1782. The French army joined forces in July 1781 with the Continental Army under Gen. George Washington at Philipsburg, New York, and then with the French fleet under Admiral de Grasse, resulting in the defeat and surrender of British forces under Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, on October 19, 1781. The maps were executed, presumably soon after the momentous events of the American Revolution, from sketches and other information made on by Berthier during the march. The maps fall into two interrelated series: (1) the French Army’s camp sites on the southward march from Newport, Rhode Island, to Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, and on the return march northward in the summer and autumn of 1782; and (2) “Itineraries” or daily marches of the Army (from Newport as far as Elkton, Maryland, in 1781. The daily marches for the 1782 northward journey are lacking among the Berthier Collection at Princeton. Another set of Berthier’s maps is preserved among the Rochambeau Papers in the Library of Congress; this set, although duplicating in part the Princeton set, is apparently less complete. Harry C. Black, Class of 1909, acquired the Berthier Collection, formerly in the Berthier family archives at Château de Grosbois, France, and donated them to the Library in 1939.

Berthier’s road maps are the most spectacular part of the collection, documenting the march of French and Continental forces and providing an early cartographic record of a few major cities, such as Philadelphia and Baltimore, as well as many small towns and villages. There are two maps of Princeton (nos. 54, 55), one of which shows the location of Nassau Hall. Other places in New Jersey include Pompton (Pompton Plains), Whippany, Bullion’s Tavern (Liberty Corner), Somerset Courthouse (Millstone), and Trenton). The maps cannot be fully appreciated without the accompanying textual material of his journal (1780-1783), which provides a detailed description and explanation of the routes covered by the maps. In addition, there are related manuscripts and documents, including a letter (1785) from Rochambeau, notes on the history of Virginia, and Berthier’s journal of his later visit to Prussia (1783).In later years, Berthier continued to be employed in staff posts, and to earn regular promotions. He saw active military service during the French Revolution. In 1796 he accompanied General Bonaparte in the Italian campaign, as chief of staff of the army. Soon after Bonaparte became Emperor Napolean I, in 1804, he chose Berthier as one of the eighteen army officers to be named Marshal of the Empire. Subsequently, Berthier acquired other titles: Duke of Valangin, Price of Neufchâtel, Prince of Wagram. Marshal Berthier was with Napolean in the campaigns of Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland; he was in the Peninsular Campaign (1808), the Austrian Campaign (1809), in Russia (1812), Germany (1813), and France (1814). In 1814 he abandoned Napoleon, and died the following year, on June 1, 1815, at Bamberg.

To view the finding aid for the Louis-Alexandre Berthier Collection (C0022), go to http://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/C0022. At the main screen, one can either browse under “Contents and Arrangement” (on the left side) or download the finding aid by clicking on “View Entire Finding Aid” (upper right). To search for maps of particular cities and towns, enter the place name and the word map in the search window (“Search this Collection”). Then review the search results, select the particular map of interest, and click on “View Image.” Please note, images are not to be published or broadcast without permission of the Princeton University Library. For conservation reasons, access to the original manuscripts is restricted. Researchers should use the digital images provided online. The best study of Berthier’s journals and maps is Howard C. Rice, Jr., and Anne S. K. Brown, The American Campaigns of Rochambeau’s Army 1780, 1781, 1782, 1783 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972), 2 volumes. For more information about the Berthier Collection or permission to publish and/or broadcast images, contact the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at rbsc@princeton.edu

Map of Philadelphia, 1781

Firestone Library is pleased to be exhibiting a selection of Woody Allen’s film scripts in conjunction with the question-and-answer session with the celebrated American movie director, screenwriter, and author in Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium on Sunday, October 27. On display in the Eighteenth-Century Window of Firestone Library (October 21–November 17) are versions of What’s New, Pussycat? (1965), Sleeper (1973), Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), and Midnight in Paris (2010). The scripts are from the Woody Allen Papers, in the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. Since 1980, Princeton has been the repository for the papers of the Woody Allen. In making his initial gift of papers to Princeton, Allen wrote, “When the idea of donating them to a university came up, Princeton was immediately thought of because of very kind interest by the school and Mr. Laurence Rockefeller” [Class of 1932]. Since then, the papers have grown to 48 boxes of manuscripts, typescripts, and other materials documenting Woody Allen’s writing life, from television and stand-up comedy writing in the 1950s and ’60s to the present.

Allen is best known for writing, directing, and acting in many of his own films, and has been the recipient of many honors and awards, including four Academy Awards: Annie Hall, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay (co-written with Marshall Brickman), 1978; Hannah and Her Sisters, Best Original Screenplay, 1987; and Midnight in Paris, Best Screenplay, 2012. The papers shows the stages of crafting film scripts, from handwritten plot outlines and drafts on yellow legal pads to successive typescript versions, corrected by the author and often stapled together from different versions. There are also bound mimeographed production scripts. Allen has also been a contributor in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, and other magazines. The papers contain drafts, typescripts, and proofs of articles, short stories, essays, plays, comedy writing, and other documentation of Allen’s creative life.

To access the finding aid, go to http://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/TC002  For reference assistance, email rbsc@princeton.edu

The celebrated Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (2010), recently visited the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections with his son Álvaro Vargas Llosa, a writer and commentator on Latin American and international affairs. They visited to review a few of about 300 boxes and cartons of the Mario Vargas Llosa Papers (C0641), which are preserved in the Manuscripts Division (see photos below). Vargas Llosa is currently a Lecturer in Creative Writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts and the Program in Latin American Studies.  He is co-teaching a course with Ephrain Kristal, Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature and the Program in Latin American Studies. The course is “The Literary Works of Mario Vargas Llosa in Their Artistic, Intellectual and Political Contexts” (LAS 329). In connection with course reading and writing assignments, students in the class are making independent visits to the Department of Rare Books and Special Collection to consult portions of the Vargas Llosa Papers.

Mario Vargas Llosa’s papers include the author’s notebooks, drafts, corrected proofs, and manuscripts of scripts, essays, articles, speeches, and lectures. His extensive correspondence covers the period 1957 to 1994, and includes letters from family members, publishers, and a wide range of renowned writers such as Jorge Amado, José María Arguedas, Carlos Barral, Mario Benedetti, José Bianco, Julio Cortázar, José Donoso, Rosario Ferré, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Ana María Matute, Pablo Neruda, José Emilio Pacheco, Nelida Piñon, Carlos Quijano, Augusto Roa Bastos, Sebastián Salazar Bondy, Manuel Scorza, and others. Also in his papers is the political archive pertaining to his leadership of the the Movimiento Libertad, a civic organization which was founded in Peru in 1987, and as the presidential candidate of Frente Democrático (FREDEMO) in 1989 and 1990. For an inventory of the Mario Vargas Llosa Papers, go to http://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/C0641  The papers are one of more than 70 literary archives in the Manuscripts Division, including Reinaldo Arenas, José Bianco, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Julio Cortázar, José Donoso, Carlos Fuentes, Elena Garro, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Alejandra Pizarnik, Juan José Saer, and many other authors. For a listing of Latin American literary collections, go to http://firestone.princeton.edu/latinam/literarymss.php. For reference assistance about Princeton’s holdings, contact rbsc@princeton.edu.

Mario Vargas Llosa (left), with Álvaro Vargas Llosa (right). Not to be reproduced without permission of the Princeton University Library.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940), Class of 1917,  entered Princeton a century ago. His first day of classes was on his birthday, September 24, 1913. Marking this centennial, the Princeton University Library has digitized Fitzgerald’s manuscripts and typescripts of his autobiographical first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), from the F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers, in the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library:  http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0044

The papers were the gift of the author’s daughter Scottie Fitzgerald Lanahan in 1950 and remain among the greatest treasures in the Princeton University Library. This Side of Paradise still stands are the most famous literary work about Princeton University. While Fitzgerald was not a good student and never graduated, dropping out in 1917 to join the U.S. Army during World War I, he began learning the craft of writing as an undergraduate and befriended other students who were aspiring authors, Edmund Wilson, Class of 1916, and John Peale Bishop, Class of 1917. Fitzgerald came to form a deep affection for Princeton that lasted until his untimely death in Hollywood.

Fitzgerald began writing This Side of Paradise at Princeton, continued in November 1917 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, with the working title “The Romantic Egoist,” and completed a first draft at Cottage Club in March 1918. After this draft had been twice rejected by the distinguished New York publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons, Fitzgerald returned to his parents’ home at 599 Summit Avenue in his native St. Paul, Minnesota, and added five new chapters to the four he had written the previous year. He changed the second title of the novel from “The Education of a Personage” to “This Side of Paradise” and sent the novel to Maxwell Perkins at Scribner’s. The publisher accepted the novel on September 16, 1919, and published it on March 26, 1920.  Publication of the novel launched the young author on a successful writing career, with nearly 50,000 copies in print by 1921, and helped him win Zelda Sayre’s hand in marriage.

With the manuscripts and typescripts now online, one can see the author at work writing and revising the two halves of his novel, “The Romantic Egotist” and “The Education of a Personage.” Two versions survive and have been digitized: (1) “The Romantic Egotist,” the earlier corrected typescript in five chapters that Fitzgerald sent to Charles W. Donahoe in October 1918, and the latter donated to Princeton in 1948. (2) “This Side of Paradise,” which includes about 80 typescript pages that Fitzgerald reused from “The Romantic Egotist.” Fitzgerald wrote by hand and did not type, so errors were likely introduced by the anonymous typist, who drew diagonal lines through pages as they were typed. In addition to the author’s own corrections, a St. Paul school friend named Katherine Tighe (formerly described as an anonymous reader, called “the Grammarian”) went through the manuscript to correct spelling, grammar, and expression, especially toward the end of the novel. Fitzgerald’s galleys and page proofs do not survive, but we know that innumerable errors escaped his attention, and his celebrated editor as well. The novel became a commercial success despite the many errors, some of which were corrected in subsequent printings.

Fitzgerald’s hastily written, somewhat disjointed coming-of-age novel about contemporary American youth, restless and disillusioned, was thinly based on his own life, with Amory Blaine as his alter-ego and other characters based on college friends and early romantic interests. Despite imperfections, the novel made him a voice of the post-World War I generation, a theme we can see when Fitzgerald writes in the novel, “Long after midnight the towers and spires of Princeton were visible, with here and there a late-burning light—and suddenly out of the clear darkness the sound of bells. As an endless dream it went on; the spirit of the past brooding over a new generation, the chosen youth from the muddled, unchastened world, still fed romantically on the mistakes and half-forgotten dreams of dead statesmen and poets. Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.”

Today, This Side of Paradise is probably of most interest as evidence of Fitzgerald’s early writing efforts at Princeton and in the years after he dropped out. Yet the book still provides encouragement and inspiration for new generations of Princeton students a century later. But Fitzgerald drew heavily on his experiences at Princeton and was able to incorporate portions of his undergraduate contributions to the Nassau Literary Magazine [Nassau Lit for short], most notably “The Spire and the Gargoyle” (February 1917) for book 1, chapter 2, of the novel. As Prof. James L. W. West III demonstrated in The Making of This Side of Paradise (1983), p. 43, the novel has echoes of Fitzgerald’s other Nassau Lit stories of 1917, published before he left Princeton, including “The Debutante,” “Babes in the Woods,” “Princeton—The Last Day,” and “On a Play Twice Seen.”

The novel is filled with scores of local references to Princeton University, including the Nassau Lit, Daily Princetonian, Triangle Club, and Cottage Club. Princeton football, the Nassau Inn, and other subjects also come up.  Fitzgerald’s protagonist, Amory Blaine, reveals the author’s love of the university, its campus and Collegiate Gothic architecture. “Princeton drew him most,” wrote Fitzgerald, “with its atmosphere of bright colors and its alluring reputation as the pleasantest country club in America…. From the first he loved Princeton — its lazy beauty, its half-grasped significance, the wild moonlight revel of the rushes, the handsome, prosperous big-game crowds, and under it all the air of struggle that pervaded his class.” His love for Princeton never left him. A decade later, in an article in College Humor (1927), Fitzgerald wrote about Princeton, “one sees the ideal of a university become a myth, a vision, a meadow lark among the smoke stacks. Yet perhaps it is there at Princeton, only more elusive than under the skies of the Prussian Rhineland or Oxfordshire; or perhaps some men come upon it suddenly and possess it, while others wander forever outside. Even these seek in vain through middle age for any corner of the republic that preserves so much of what is fair, gracious, charming and honorable in American life.”

This Side of Paradise joins the previously digitized autograph manuscript and corrected galleys of The Great Gatsby in the Princeton University Digital Library. For information about the digital edition, contact Don C. Skemer, Curator of Manuscripts, dcskemer@princeton.edu  Concerning the Fitzgerald Papers and photoduplication, contact Gabriel Swift, Reference Librarian, gswift@princeton.edu; rbsc@princeton.edu  For information about the manuscripts and typescripts, see This Side of Paradise: The Manuscripts and Typescripts, edited with an introduction by Matthew J. Bruccoli (New York: Garland Publishing, 1990), 2 vols. Concerning the evolution of the text, see James L. W. West III, The Making of This Side of Paradise (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983); and This Side of Paradise, edited by James L.W. West III, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Cambridge, England; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (autograph manuscript), F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton Universaity Library. “Long after midnight the towers and spires of Princeton were visible, with here and there a late-burning light—and suddenly out of the clear darkness the sound of bells. As an endless dream it went on; the spirit of the past brooding over a new generation, the chosen youth from the muddled, unchastened world…”

Click to open or download PDF: “Checklist of Western Medieval, Byzantine, and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Princeton University Library and the Scheide Library.”

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections has very significant holdings of western medieval, Byzantine, and Renaissance manuscripts, ranging in date from the 8th to 16th centuries. Most of them are in the Manuscripts Division, in the collections of Robert Garrett, Class of 1897; Robert Taylor, Class of 1930; Grenville Kane; and the growing Princeton Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.

This checklist is not a catalogue, but rather a listing of more than 500 manuscrits in the Princeton University Library and the Scheide Library by holding unit, collection, and manuscript number or shelfmark. Links are given for well over 2,000 digital images of miniatures, illustrations, and selected diagrams and decoration in the manuscripts, about a third of which are illuminated. It also provides links to digitized grayscale microfilm of Middle English manuscripts at Princeton and for a group of important manuscripts digitized in the Library since the 1990s. While Latin texts are predominant, there are excellent holdings of Byzantine and post-Byzantine Greek manuscripts, and vernacular manuscripts in Middle English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Dutch or Flemish.

Two recently published catalogues provide full textual and codicological description of western medieval, Byzantine, and Renaissance manuscripts, illustrated with hundreds of color plates. In addition, the online checklist serves as a guide to sources of full cataloging and digital images for western medieval, Byzantine, and Renaissance manuscripts in the Princeton University Library and the Scheide Library.

● Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Princeton University Library. By Don C. Skemer; incorporating contributions by Adelaide Bennett, Jean F. Preston, William P. Stoneman and the Index of Christian Art (Princeton, N.J.: Department of Art and Archaeology and the Princeton University Library, in association with Princeton University Press, 2013). 2 volumes (I: xxv, 483 pages, 88 pages of plates; II: xix, 558 pages, 40 pages of plates): color illustrations; 30 cm: This catalogue covers the holdings of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.

● Greek Manuscripts at Princeton, Sixth to Nineteenth Century: A Descriptive Catalogue. By Sofia Kotzabassi and Nancy Patterson Ševčenko; with the collaboration of Don C. Skemer (Princeton, N.J.: Department of Art and Archaeology and Program in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University, in association with Princeton University Press, 2010). xxix, 304 p., [174] p. of plates of color and black-and-white plates; 31 cm:  This catalogue covers the holdings of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, The Scheide Library, Princeton University Art Museum, and Princeton Theological Seminary.

Photoduplication is readily available. The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections maintains high-resolution digital files, slides, and transparencies for these manuscripts. For conservation reasons, use of a few manuscripts is restricted. For additional information and to make appointments, potential researchers are strongly encouraged to contact Don C. Skemer, Curator of Manuscripts, at dcskemer@princeton.edu.

The Princeton University Library is very pleased to announce the digitization of the autograph manuscript and corrected galleys of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940), The Great Gatsby (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925), which were donated to the Princeton University Library in 1950 by Scottie Fitzgerald Lanahan, the daughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald. These manuscripts are part of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers (C0187), the best-known, comprehensive author archive in the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. We can see Fitzgerald at work on his third novel over a four-year period: (1) Ur-Gatsby (2-page fragment), the author’s abandoned effort, conceived in 1922 and written in 1923; (2) The Great Gatsby autograph manuscript (302 pages), which he largely wrote in France and completed by September 1924; and (3) corrected galleys of “Trimalchio,” the novel’s working title when it was typeset by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1924, only to be much reworked by the author early in 1925. The digital images are online in the Princeton University Digital Library (PUDL): with the permission of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Trust (copyright holder), acting in consultation with Harold Ober Associates (literary agency representing the Fitzgerald Literary Trust) and Simon & Schuster (owner of the Scribner imprint). The digitized manuscript and galleys are online in time for Princeton University’s Commencement 2013, a century after F. Scott Fitzgerald (Class of 1917) became a freshman at Princeton in 1913. Digitization is particularly timely because of intense popular interest in the author and his great novel as a result of Australian movie director Baz Luhrmann’s new film version of The Great Gatsby, released on May 10.

Fitzgerald conceived and crafted his novel in layers over a three-year period. In June 1922, living at White Bear Lake, Minnesota, he began planning his new book, which Fitzgerald specialists now refer to as the Ur-Gatsby. He started writing this novel in June 1923 and produced some 18,000 words. It was set in the Midwest around 1885 and did not have Nick Carraway as its narrator. Two pages of this manuscript survive at Princeton quite by chance, since Fitzgerald attached them to a letter that he sent to Willa Cather. But much of the Ur-Gatsby text was discarded or published elsewhere, such as the short story “Absolution” (June 1924). By April 1924, now living in Great Neck, New York, Fitzgerald began working on the novel again, but now set in 1922. Fitzgerald completed the autograph manuscript in France by September 1924. The draft was just over 250 pages, almost always only on rectos. Fitzgerald customarily wrote in pencil, as we can see in a brief bit of grainy 1920s film footage showing him writing in a garden. He did not type and therefore had a secretary prepare a typescript from the manuscript.

In November 1924, Fitzgerald sent the typescript to his legendary Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins, who had galleys set from them. Unfortunately, this typescript and subsequent typescripts and carbon copies do not survive. The “Trimalchio” galleys were sent to Fitzgerald in Rome, where he corrected and revised them during the first two months of 1925. The author corrected the galleys in pencil but also pasted on long typed additions of text. As James L.W. West III has noted in his edition of Trimalchio, the book in the original galleys was not the same novel as The Great Gatsby as finally published. Despite similarities, there are crucial differences. Fitzgerald conveyed or recommended additional corrections and changes to Maxwell Perkins by letter and telegram. Among other things, the author considered alternative titles, such as “Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires” and “Gold-Hatted Gatsby.” By spring 1925, Fitzgerald settled on “Under the Red, White and Blue.” However, by the time he had communicated this to Maxwell Perkins, the book had already been published (April 10, 1925) as The Great Gatsby, the title Perkins liked best. Fitzgerald had hesitated about the title because he said there was nothing great about Jay Gatsby and felt that the title, using a surname, might remind people of Sinclair Lewis’s novel Babbitt (1922).

Matthew J. Bruccoli suggested that some portions in a smaller hand were copied from the earlier manuscript draft, while others in a larger hand were first draft. Fitzgerald made innumerable changes in the story line and inserted new text at many points. Clearly visible on nearly every page of the autograph manuscript are his corrections (from entire passages and paragraphs to cross outs with interlinear replacements of a word or phrase), erasures (some decipherable, others not, leaving gaps in the text), instructions (with arrows), handwritten additions on additional sheets of paper, and other changes. The creative process is also much in evidence with the galleys, which the author corrected in pencil, as well as adding typed sheets of revised text tipped onto particular galleys. Bruccoli argued that the author “regarded galleys as a special kind of typescript or trial edition in which to rewrite whole scenes as necessary.” Fitzgerald sent innumerable letters and telegrams to his legendary editor Maxwell Perkins, preserved at Princeton in the Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons (C0101). Most of them relate to progress on the book, but some sent from Rome and Capri list corrections. Even after publication, Fitzgerald continued to think of making more changes in later printings or additions, and for this reason corrected a personal copy of the first edition, which is preserved in his papers.

For information about the digital edition of The Great Gatsby autograph manuscript and corrected galleys, contact Don C. Skemer, Curator of Manuscripts, dcskemer@princeton.edu  For a recent interview, see Princeton Alumni Weekly (June 5, 2013): http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2013/06/05/pages/5800/index.xml  Concerning the Fitzgerald Papers and photoduplication, email Gabriel Swift, Reference Librarian, gswift@princeton.edu; rbsc@princeton.edu  Essential bibliography about the manuscript and galleys includes F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Facsimile of the Manuscript, edited with an introduction by Matthew J. Bruccoli (Washington, D.C.: Microcard Editions Books, 1973); Matthew J. Bruccoli, “An Instance of Apparent Plagiarism: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, and the First Gatsby Manuscript,” Princeton University Library Chronicle, vol. 39 (Spring 1978), pp. 171–78; Trimalchio: A Facsimile Edition of the Original Galley Proofs for The Great Gatsby, afterword by Matthew J. Bruccoli (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, in cooperation with the Thomas Cooper Library, 2000); F. Scott Fitzgerald, Trimalchio: An Early Version of The Great Gatsby, edited by James L.W. West III, Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Autograph manuscript of The Great Gatsby, first page. Not to be reproduced without permission of the Princeton University Library.

Cataloging is now available online for the entire collection of the nearly 2200 manuscripts comprising the New Series of Islamic Manuscripts in the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. The New Series constitutes the premier collection of predominantly Shi`ite manuscripts in the Western Hemisphere and among the finest in the world. The online records have been created as part of the Islamic Manuscripts Cataloging and Digitization Project, to improve access to these rich collections and share them worldwide through digital technology. Generous support from the David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Project has funded this ongoing effort. Researchers can now locate Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish manuscripts by searching the Library’s online catalog.

Over the past two years, the Princeton University Library has created online biblio­graphic records covering over 800 Persian and Ottoman Turkish manuscripts in the New Series. Most of these had previously been described only in abbreviated format in the Preliminary Checklist of Uncataloged Islamic Manuscripts in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library, while approximately 200 of them were completely undocumented. Each manuscript was given a full catalog record that includes an authorized name, title and title variations where appropriate, dating in both Hijri and Gregorian formats, incipit, physical description of the entire manuscript, description of the text, references, and appropriate subject headings.

The newly cataloged manuscripts largely reflect the core topical focus of the New Series, namely the rich intellectual and spiritual tradition of Shi`ite Islam. In Persian this tradition is represented mainly by works on doctrine, prayer, and the lives of the Imams, composed after the rise of the Safavids down to the early 20<sup>th</sup> century. Noteworthy are three manuscripts purporting to be in the handwriting of the prolific Muhammad Baqir al-Majlisi: `Ayn al-hayat (no. 775), Zad al-ma`ad (no. 1495), and Ziyarat-i `Ashura (no. 1450). Of the more unusual manuscripts are two volumes of a four-volume work on doctrine, likely Shaykhi, the Bahjat al-arwah by Nasir al-Islam, an autograph manuscript written in the 1920s (no. 190 and no. 470); as well as the second volume of Bahr al-masa’ib by Muhammad Riza Parvin, an autograph manuscript dated 1862 which recounts the martyrdoms of the Prophet’s family (no. 471).

New Series also contains numerous collections of poetry by both famous and lesser known poets in Persian. The entire works of Tughra-yi Mashhadi are collected in a two-volume manuscript dated 1696 (no. 372-373), and there is an autograph collection of the poems of Musahibi Na’ini, written in 1893-1902 (no. 132). While there is ample representation of poets hailing from Persia, there are also manuscripts of Persian poetry by Indian poets, such as Ghanimat (no. 2065) and Ghaws (no. 2068). Also worth mentioning is the small collection of Ottoman Turkish poetry, which includes the Tale of Seyfülmülûk by an unknown author (no. 1558).

While the bulk of the series is comprised of Shi`ite works and Persian poetry, there are substantial holdings in medicine, history, grammar, lexicology, astronomy, astrology, occultism, Sufism, and Sunni law. For example, Bektashi Sufi doctrine and practice is addressed by a collection of Ottoman Turkish texts which includes the Fakrname attributed to Ja`far al-Sadiq (no. 2043), and in Persian of Indian origin are several commentaries by Parvanah Shah on the Siraj-i anjan, a Sufi treatise written by Muḥammad Siraj Allah and `Abd Siraj al-Raḥman (no. 1794, no. 1812, and no. 1853). The tradition of illumination is well-attested in the series, a striking example being a richly illuminated copy of the Mi’at kalimah with interlinear Persian translation (no. 710). Additionally, a few manuscripts contain miniatures, such as Layla va Majnun by Hatifi (no. 1585) and a Persian translation of the Ramayana (no. 1751).

For more information about the cataloging, contact Denise L. Soufi, Islamic Manuscripts Cataloger, at delsoufi@princeton.edu; for information about the overall project, contact Don C. Skemer, Curator of Manuscripts, at dcskemer@princeton.edu.

Ali ibn Abi Talib, Mi’at kalimah, 15–?, fol. 1b-2a (no. 710). Not to be reproduced without permission of the Princeton University Library.

Muhammad Baqir al-Majlisi, Zad al-ma`ad, 1696, fol. 199b (no. 1495). Not to be reproduced without permission of the Princeton University Library.

It is April 15, “Tax Day,” and in the spirit of tax days past and present, we can look at a group of extraordinary documents relating to the 1798 Direct Federal Tax in the recently reprocessed and expanded Ebenezer Foote Papers (C0430), Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare books and Special Collections.

Ebenezer Foote (1756–1829), born in Connecticut, fought in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. He was at the Battle of Bunker Hill, wintered at Valley Forge, and was taken prisoner during the disastrous Battle of Fort Washington.  In December 1777 he escaped from Bridewell Prison in New York City by swimming across the Hudson River to New Jersey.  It is not surprising that his health suffered from this event, but desiring to continue serving his country, he became an inspector of cattle in the Continental  Army’s Commissary Department, moving cattle from the countryside to West Point so that the beef could be distributed to sometimes starving troops.

After the American Revolution, Foote was given land in Delhi, New York, as partial compensation for his military service.  Soon after, Delaware County, in which Delhi was located, was formed and Foote became an influential citizen there, as politician, county clerk, land agent, and judge.  In 1798 he was assigned to be principal assessor of the first assessment district in the eighth division of the state of New York for the 1798 Direct Federal Tax.

The 1798 Direct Federal Tax resulted from the Quasi-War with France and the United States’ need to develop its military.  Thus, Congress placed into effect a two million dollar direct tax for property (and that includes slaves) for the sixteen states in the United States.  Foote and other assessors all across the new nation traveled throughout their districts assessing the dwelling houses, land, and slaves, and recording their information on eleven forms.

Among the most interesting items in the Ebenezer Foote Papers are these eleven forms, in varying degrees of completeness.  These are clearly not the official records submitted to the presidentially appointed Board of Commissioners, but since those records were not systematically collected or preserved, these may be the only such records for Delhi, New York.  In fact, according to the National Archives, only a few of the enormous number of official assessments are located and available for research.

Included among these assessments in the Ebenezer Foote Papers are the “Particular List or Description of each Dwelling-house,” the “Particular List or Description of all Lands, Lots, Buildings, and Wharves, owned, possessed, or occupied,” and the “Particular List of Slaves, owned or superintended.”  The houses are described best, with name of occupant, owner, situation, dimensions, windows, materials, quantity of land, age and state of repair of structure, and valuation of the property.  It is the slave lists, however, that are most disturbing. The names of the slaves are not recorded. We are only told who owned and superintended them, the town in which they were employed, the number of and genders of slaves owned, and, most important, the number of slaves above the age of 12 and under the age of 50 who were subject to taxation.  Slave owners were taxed fifty cents for each slave between the ages of 12 and 50 who was not precluded from working as a result of permanent illness or disability.  The assessments reveal that five of the thirteen slaves within the first assessment district of the eighth division of New Yorkwere subject to taxation.

Along with these tax documents, the Ebenezer Foote Papers is filled with official correspondence and business, legal, and financial records, which shed light on life the Early National Period.  For information about using these or any other collections in research, contact rbsc@princeton.edu.