Charles Dudley Warner Papers
Scope and Contents
This collection contains a multitude of correspondence, as well as manuscript writings; book-length works, articles, addresses, notes, poetry and proofs, twenty travel diaries and notebooks; miscellaneous personal papers, including business and personal documents, scrapbooks; photographs, and ephemera. Correspondents in letters include well-known figures from the 19th century such as Henry Mills Alden, Samuel Bowles III, Anna E. Dickinson, Annie Fields, James T. Fields, Hamlin Garland, Richard Watson Gilder, Daniel Coit Gilman, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, William Dean Howells, Laurence Hutton, Helen Hunt Jackson, Robert Underwood Johnson, Richard Malcolm Johnston, George Parsons Lathrop, Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury, Hamilton Wright Mabie, James R. Osgood, Thomas Nelson Page, William Cowper Prime, George Haven Putman, Whitelow Reid, F.B. Sanborn, Horace Elisha Scudder, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Henry Clay Trumbull, and George Edward Woodberry. It includes the following manuscript writings, near complete: Captain John Smith , The Golden House , In the Levant , Mummies and Moslems , That Fortune , Their Pilgrimage , Washington Irving ,and 18 leaves of a preliminary draft of part of Warner's contribution to The Gilded Age. Business and personal documents depict Warner’s activities, and photographic material conveys everyday life. Included in the collection are 23 illustrations (original pen and ink sketches) by James Wells Champney ("Champ") for Warner’s semi-autobiographical novel, Being a Boy (1877).
Dates
- Creation: 1836 - 1918
Creator
- Warner, Charles Dudley, 1829-1900 (Person)
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open to the public and must be used in the John M.K. Davis Reading Room of the Watkinson Library, Trinity College Library, Hartford, Connecticut. Researchers must register and agree to copyright and privacy laws when using this collection.
Conditions Governing Use
Digital surrogates may be provided in accordance with the duplication policy of the Watkinson Library.
Copyright resides with the creators of the documents or their heirs unless otherwise specified. It is the researcher's responsibility to secure permission to publish materials from the appropriate copyright holder.
Archival materials may contain sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal and/or state right to privacy laws or other regulations. While we make a good faith effort to identify and remove such materials, some may be missed during our processing. If a researcher finds sensitive personal information (e.g. social security numbers) in a collection, please bring it to the attention of the reading room staff.
Biographical / Historical
Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900); an American essayist, novelist, and journalist most known for penning a book with Mark Twain, titled The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) making the term “Gilded Age” a part of the U.S. history lexicon was born in Plainfield, Massachusetts in 1829. He went on to study at Hamilton College (Clinton, New York), and went on to study law at the University of Pennsylvania. Warner practiced law in Chicago from 1856-1860 when he decided to become assistant editor of The Hartford Press which eventually would become The Hartford Courant. He joined Harper’s Magazine, as editor, in 1884, for which he conducted The Editor’s Drawer until 1892, then taking over Editor’s Study. Warner also contributed numerous publications including Saunterings (1872), In the Wilderness (1878), The Golden House (1894), The People for Whom Shakespeare Wrote (1897), and a biography of Washington Irving among his most notable works. He died in 1900 in Hartford, Connecticut.
Extent
35 Cubic Feet (106 flat boxes, 4 portfolios, 1 scrapbook)
Language of Materials
English
Arrangement
Collection is arranged by material type. Articles in Series I are arranged alphabetically. Correspondence to Warner are filed alphabetically by addressee.
Series I: Articles (Published)
Series II: Correspondence
Subseries I: Letters from Warner
Subseries II: Letters to Warner (Boxes 16-73)
Subseries III: Letters neither from nor to Warner
Series III: Diaries and Notebooks
Series IV: Manuscripts
Series V: Photographs
Series VI: Printed Materials: Programs, Invitations, Business Cards
Series VII: Receipts and Financial Records
Series VIII: Reports: Committee of Fifty
Series IX: Scrapbooks
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The Charles Dudley Warner papers were donated to the Watkinson Library in 1921 by Mary Barton, executor of Charles Dudley Warner's will.
- Title
- Guide to the Charles Dudley Warner papers
- Status
- In Progress
- Author
- Michelle C. Sigiel
- Date
- 2018-09
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the Watkinson Library - Archival Collections Repository
Trinity College Library
300 Summit St.
Hartford Connecticut 06106