http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/1814736827

Paul Leicester Ford papers

The collection consists of correspondence, writings, and personal papers of the American historian and author Paul Leicester Ford. The correspondence is largely professional and documents Ford's work as an editor, historian, bibliographer, novelist and playwright. Ford's correspondents include John Kendrick Bangs, Samuel L. Clemens, Edward Everett Hale, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Rudyard Kipling, and S. Weir Mitchell; earlier letters written to others by James Fennimore Cooper and Jared Sparks are also present. Writings include notes and research materials, most concerning colonial and Federal-period America; drafts; printed versions of published articles; scripts and music for dramatic productions; and publicity for specific works as well as about Ford generally. The novel Janice Meredith and its dramatic adaptation starring Mary Mannering are partiuclarly well represented in the collection; also present is an unfinished historical novel about Elizabeth Chudleigh, Countess of Bristol, along with contemporary printed documentation concerning her trial for bigamy. The collection also contains examples of Ford's work as an editor/printer on his home press, including his genealogy of Noah Webster; a heavily extra-illustrated copy of Websteriana containing autograph manuscript fragments of Webster's dictionary; a genealogy of Gordon L. Ford; and a pamphlet entitled "1814. New London. Pettypaug Point." Some papers documenting the historical research of Worthington C. Ford are present, as well as ephemera from Gordon L. Ford's participation in events commemorating the centenary of Washington's inauguration. The collection also includes photographs and paintings of Ford, including two miniatures; a miniature of "Janice Meredith"; photographs of his parents and siblings; and portrait paintings of Ford's ancestors Noah Webster (by Samuel F. B. Morse) and Rebecca Greenleaf Webster (by Jared Bradley Flagg).

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