Ermine Algaier
I am a 2017-2018 Katharine F. Pantzer Jr. Fellow in Descriptive Bibliography and a Visiting Assist Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Monmouth College. I am also the Managing Editor of William James Studies and Secretary of the William James Society.
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This website serves the purpose of raising funding to facilitate archival and library research that will reclaim significant portions of Royce's personal library. By giving to the Royce Library Recovery Project your support will help fund research that will make an important contribution to the Royce community by making available texts and marginalia that will deepen our understanding of Royce’s life and work. To learn more about this project and its principal researcher, please browse before going to the Donation Page.
Books
Each of the more than 1,800 entries located at Harvard Library are organized alphabetically by author. In addition to standard citation information, the annotated bibliography contains the following information:
• library location and call number
• autograph (date and location)
• book plate type
• accession date
• markings
• marginalia
• indexical system of annotations
• availability of digital copy
The author's introduction features an overview and historical reconstruction of the Harvard collection, a primer to James’s distinctive style of marking and marginalia, and suggestions for future research on the collection. Noteworthy features of the manuscript include: a preface by John J. McDermott; an updated bibliography of more than 1,800 newly annotated entries; a discussion of James's 138 donations to Harvard College Library (1872-1910); and information about additional volumes from James’s personal library that are not part of the Harvard collection.
Papers
Conference Presentations
This paper is divided into three parts. First, I briefly discuss how I made this discovery and the different archival resources and strategies used to reclaim many of these volumes. The next section describes some of the more important findings and reflects upon the ways that these texts, as well as the marking and marginalia contain within, can further develop our understanding of Royce’s work and life. For example, I address Royce’s copy of Friedrich Goltz’s Ueber die Verrichtungen des Grosshirns: Gesammelte Abhandlungen (1881) – which contains two hundred and seventy-seven annotations, as well as copious markings — and other volumes belonging to his 1905-06 gift of 151 volumes known as “The Schelling Collection.” The final section of the paper advances several strategies for locating, identifying, and cataloging the remainder of this hidden collection. Using the example of Richard Ludwig Heinrich Avenarius (1843-1896), a Swiss-German philosopher, I demonstrate how cross-referencing the accession records and other archival documents can lead to finding additional volumes formerly owned by Royce. For example, Royce’s copy of Avenarius’s Philosophie als Denken der Welt gemäss dem Princip des Kleinsten kraftmasses. Prolegomena zu einer Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (1876) and Zur terminalfunktion: Ausführliche inhaltsangabe der vier hauptschriften (1913).
Adding to the impressive work of Perry, Skrupskelis, Taylor, Richardson, and Kowalski, the first part of the paper provides a reconstructive history of the James’ personal library. Drawing upon archival evidence, correspondences, and oral history, I discuss the ways in which the library was disbanded by Henry James, Ralph Barton Perry, and Abraham Roback fourteen years after James’s death. In reconstructing this narrative, I describe how volumes were categorized and sold by Perry, how Henry James donated significant portions of it to Harvard, that as many as 1,000 volumes were sold at a Harvard book sale, and how the unwanted remaining items were eventually given to the “junk man.” Along the way, this paper sheds new light on how some of these volumes that were sold to colleagues, friends, and book sellers eventually made their way back into the Harvard library system upon the death of their new owner.
The second portion of the paper addresses a recent breakthrough in Jamesian studies. While doing archival research at Harvard University Archives, I discovered documentation that James routinely donated books to Harvard College Library: according to the “Librarian’s Waste-book” there are accession records demonstrating that he made a series of 138 donations—giving more than 900 volumes—during his tenure as a Harvard Professor. Citing the newly discovered copies James’s copies of Revue Germanique et Française (1860-1864), I layout several strategies for uncovering other donated volumes, provide tips for identifying James’s distinctive style of marking and marginalia, and discuss how they hold the potential of providing James scholars with additional insight into his life and work.
radical empiricism.
Book Reviews
This website serves the purpose of raising funding to facilitate archival and library research that will reclaim significant portions of Royce's personal library. By giving to the Royce Library Recovery Project your support will help fund research that will make an important contribution to the Royce community by making available texts and marginalia that will deepen our understanding of Royce’s life and work. To learn more about this project and its principal researcher, please browse before going to the Donation Page.
Each of the more than 1,800 entries located at Harvard Library are organized alphabetically by author. In addition to standard citation information, the annotated bibliography contains the following information:
• library location and call number
• autograph (date and location)
• book plate type
• accession date
• markings
• marginalia
• indexical system of annotations
• availability of digital copy
The author's introduction features an overview and historical reconstruction of the Harvard collection, a primer to James’s distinctive style of marking and marginalia, and suggestions for future research on the collection. Noteworthy features of the manuscript include: a preface by John J. McDermott; an updated bibliography of more than 1,800 newly annotated entries; a discussion of James's 138 donations to Harvard College Library (1872-1910); and information about additional volumes from James’s personal library that are not part of the Harvard collection.
This paper is divided into three parts. First, I briefly discuss how I made this discovery and the different archival resources and strategies used to reclaim many of these volumes. The next section describes some of the more important findings and reflects upon the ways that these texts, as well as the marking and marginalia contain within, can further develop our understanding of Royce’s work and life. For example, I address Royce’s copy of Friedrich Goltz’s Ueber die Verrichtungen des Grosshirns: Gesammelte Abhandlungen (1881) – which contains two hundred and seventy-seven annotations, as well as copious markings — and other volumes belonging to his 1905-06 gift of 151 volumes known as “The Schelling Collection.” The final section of the paper advances several strategies for locating, identifying, and cataloging the remainder of this hidden collection. Using the example of Richard Ludwig Heinrich Avenarius (1843-1896), a Swiss-German philosopher, I demonstrate how cross-referencing the accession records and other archival documents can lead to finding additional volumes formerly owned by Royce. For example, Royce’s copy of Avenarius’s Philosophie als Denken der Welt gemäss dem Princip des Kleinsten kraftmasses. Prolegomena zu einer Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (1876) and Zur terminalfunktion: Ausführliche inhaltsangabe der vier hauptschriften (1913).
Adding to the impressive work of Perry, Skrupskelis, Taylor, Richardson, and Kowalski, the first part of the paper provides a reconstructive history of the James’ personal library. Drawing upon archival evidence, correspondences, and oral history, I discuss the ways in which the library was disbanded by Henry James, Ralph Barton Perry, and Abraham Roback fourteen years after James’s death. In reconstructing this narrative, I describe how volumes were categorized and sold by Perry, how Henry James donated significant portions of it to Harvard, that as many as 1,000 volumes were sold at a Harvard book sale, and how the unwanted remaining items were eventually given to the “junk man.” Along the way, this paper sheds new light on how some of these volumes that were sold to colleagues, friends, and book sellers eventually made their way back into the Harvard library system upon the death of their new owner.
The second portion of the paper addresses a recent breakthrough in Jamesian studies. While doing archival research at Harvard University Archives, I discovered documentation that James routinely donated books to Harvard College Library: according to the “Librarian’s Waste-book” there are accession records demonstrating that he made a series of 138 donations—giving more than 900 volumes—during his tenure as a Harvard Professor. Citing the newly discovered copies James’s copies of Revue Germanique et Française (1860-1864), I layout several strategies for uncovering other donated volumes, provide tips for identifying James’s distinctive style of marking and marginalia, and discuss how they hold the potential of providing James scholars with additional insight into his life and work.
radical empiricism.