Margaret Stillwell papers (MS-1UF-S3)

The Margaret B. Stillwell papers consist of personal papers, personal and professional correspondence, research materials related to her writings, especially those used in preparing Incunabula in American Libraries: A Second Census of Fifteenth-century Books Owned in the United States, Mexico, and Canada; notes and essays on topics ranging from the Annmary Brown Memorial to the women’s movement, examples of typefaces used by printers in Europe and the United States, and subject files. The papers are dated from 1907 to 1984. They have been arranged into the following eight series.

Series 1. Personal papers. This series consists of material that is not directly related to Margaret Stillwell’s employment as curator of the Annmary Brown Memorial Library at Brown University. It includes, but is not limited to, appraisals of her personal property, biographical and genealogical information about the Stillwell family, drawings by Miss Stillwell, instructions regarding her funeral arrangements, honorary degrees from Brown University and the University of Rhode Island, invitations to and announcements of various events, personal notebooks, photographs, and retirement and financial materials. The financial materials include instructions regarding her gifts of personal property and her home in Greenville, Rhode Island to Brown University. This series is arranged alphabetically by the title of the folder. It is dated from 1912 to 1984.

Series 2. Personal correspondence. Most of the correspondence in this series is from family members, academic colleagues, friends, and organizations to which Miss Stillwell belonged. It is arranged alphabetically by the name of the person or organization on the folder. Other personal correspondence may be found in Series 1. Personal papers; Series 5. Essays and talks; and Series 8. Subject files. Correspondence related to the second census of incunabula is in Series 3. Incunabula in American Libraries: A Second Census of Fifteenth-century Books Owned in the United States, Mexico, and Canada – documentation and correspondence. Correspondence related to Miss Stillwell’s other writings may be found in Series 4. Other writings. This series is dated from 1907 to 1984.

Series 3. Incunabula in American Libraries: A Second Census of Fifteenth-century Books Owned in the United States, Mexico, and Canada – documentation and correspondence. This series consists primarily of correspondence directly related to the preparation and publication of Incunabula in American Libraries: A Second Census of Fifteenth-century Books Owned in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, published in 1940. This work is an update of the Census of Fifteenth-century Books Owned in America, published in 1919. The series also contains material used to document the incunabula listed in the second census. That material includes author charts, title checking charts, editing instructions and photographs of the title pages of books in the Peitang Library in Beijing, China. The Peitang Library, as it was known colloquially, was part of the Church of the Holy Savior, established by the Jesuits in 1703. Finally, the series contains a box of photocopies of correspondence between Miss Stillwell and Howard Lehman Goodhart (1884-1951), a collector of incunabula. After Mr. Goodhart’s death, approximately one thousand of his incunabula were donated to the library at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The originals of correspondence owned by Brown University are in the Brown University Archives. The originals of correspondence owned by Bryn Mawr College are in their archives. The documentation for the second census is at the beginning of the series, arranged alphabetically by the title of the folder. It is followed by correspondence, arranged alphabetically by the name of the person or organization. This series is dated from 1919 to 1982.

Series 4. Other writings. This series contains material such as correspondence, research materials and drafts of various chapters used to prepare works other than Incunabula in American Libraries: A Second Census of Fifteenth-century Books Owned in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Not all of Miss Stillwell’s published works are represented here. The series is arranged alphabetically by the title of the work and within each work, alphabetically by the title of the folder. The works in this series include: The Awakening Interest in Science during the First Century of Printing 1450-1550, published in 1970; The Beginning of the World of Books, 1450 to 1470: A Chronological Survey of the Texts Chosen for Printing During the First Twenty Years of the Printing Art, with Synopsis of the Gutenberg Documents, published in 1972; Essays on the Heritage of the Renaissance from Homer to Gutenberg, published in 1982; General Hawkins as He Revealed Himself to His Librarian, Margaret Bingham Stillwell, published in 1923; Gutenberg and the Catholicon of 1460 : A Bibliographical Essay, published in 1936; Incunabula and Americana, 1450-1800: A Key to Bibliographical Study, published in 1936; Librarians are Human: Memories in and out of the Rare-Book World, 1907-1970, published in 1973; Noah's Ark, in Early Woodcuts and Modern Rhymes, published in 1942; The Pageant of Benefit Street: Down through the Years, published in 1945; Rhythm and Rhymes: The Songs of a Bookworm, published in 1977; Vignettes and Rhymes on the Times: Observations of a Bookworm, published in 1986; and While Benefit Street Was Young, published in 1943. This series also contains unpublished poetry by Miss Stillwell, two poems by Dorothy Carter Allan, and a poem translated from Chinese by Helen Waddell titled “The Age-Old Stupidity of Men”, originally written in 675 B.C.E. This series is dated from 1923 to 1984.

Series 5. Essays and talks. This series is divided into two subseries. Subseries A. Margaret B. Stillwell contains essays and notes for talks given by Miss Stillwell on topics such as the Annmary Brown Memorial, the history of Benefit Street and Rhode Island, incunabula, the problems of aging, Rush Hawkins and the women’s movement. Subseries B. Others contains one essay each by David R. Brower, Patrick T. Conley and William H. Scheride, and one anonymous essay titled “What is a Grandmother”. Within each subseries material is arranged by the title of the essay or talk. This series is dated from 1917 to 1983.

Series 6. Notes. This series contains notes on the research Miss Stillwell did in preparing her scholarly works. The notes are on topics ranging from Byzantium and Greek literature to the translation of ancient texts. Most of the material in this series is not dated. The dated material is from 1948 to 1975.

Series 7. Specimen pages. This series consists of facsimiles of the typefaces used by printers in Europe and America. Many of the examples are copies of the title page of a book. The works represented range from incunabula to titles published in the twentieth century. This series is dated from circa 1900 to the 1940s.

Series 8. Subject files. This series contains information about Gutenberg and the invention of printing; the Hroswitha Club of women book collectors founded in New York in 1944; the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women; and the Stillwell-Allan fund which supports the Annmary Brown Memorial.