US-RPB-ms1UF.B4 Guide to the W.C. Bronson papers circa 1885-1928 (bulk 1900-1928) Finding aid prepared by Caroline Hogan Processing funded by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. Brown University Archives
John Hay Library Box A Brown University Providence, RI, 02912 (401) 863-2148 email:archives@brown.edu
2012 July 13 This finding aid was produced using the Archivists' Toolkit 2013 January 23 English Finding aid based on Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) W.C. Bronson papers MS-1UF-B4 John Hay Library Special Collections
Box A Brown University Providence, RI 02912 Tel: 401-863-2146 email: hay@brown.edu
English 5.5 Linear feet (bulk 1900-1928) circa 1885-1928 The W.C. Bronson papers comprise the professional and personal records of Professor Walter Cochrane Bronson from his time as a student at Brown University through his career as a professor of English at Cornell University, West Virginia University, and Brown University, from which he retired in 1927. Bronson, Walter C. (Walter Cochrane), 1862-1928 Bronson (W.C.) papers Biographical note

Walter Cochrane Bronson (1862-1928), professor of English and author of The History of Brown University, 1764-1914, was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, on August 17, 1862. His mother was the daughter of Jeremiah Chaplin 1799, the first president of Waterville (Colby) College. He postponed entering college because of illness and graduated from Brown in 1887. He studied at Harvard Divinity School the next year and did graduate work at Cornell from 1888 to 1890. He was appointed Fellow in English Literature at Cornell in 1889 and professor of English at DePauw University in 1890. He became associate professor of English literature at Brown in 1892, and full professor in 1895. The Dictionary of American Biography said of him: "His creative tendencies were restrained ... by an acute critical sense, a liking for research, and his genius for teaching. He held it finer to teach great literature than to produce a middling sort." He edited Poems of William Collins and volumes of English and American poetry and prose, and was the author of A Short History of American Literature in 1900, and The History of Brown University, 1764-1914, written in the sesquicentennial year of the University. Bronson retired in 1927 and traveled to the south of France for his health. He died in Oxford, England, on June 2, 1928.

The above entry appears in Encyclopedia Brunoniana by Martha Mitchell, copyright ©1993 by the Brown University Library. It is used here by permission of the author and the University and may not be copied or further distributed without permission.

 Research and writing Series 1 1885-1926 Writings by Walter Cochrane Bronson 1885-1926 A Christmas dream 1 1 undated Cicero as a literary man 1 2 circa 1895 The cow that wanted to write poetry 1 3 1893 January Environments of a country pedagogue 1 4 undated Fidelity to the fathers 1 5 1905 The higher patriotism 1 6 undated Hobbies of men of letters 1 7 undated Influence of science upon modern English poetry 1 8 undated The magazine habit 1 9 circa 1910 Modern monks 1 10 1887 June Notes of my talk with President Angell 1 11 1910 November 12 Odd and pleasant things in some half-forgotten poets 1 12 undated Old Testament Apocrypha 1 13 circa 1919 Past and present 1 14 1926 March 19 Speeches 1 15 undated Commencement speech 1 16 undated Commencement speech 1 17 1922 Critical papers 1 18 undated Every Man his own Boswell An Imaginary Tripartite Soliloquy 1 19 undated History of the class of '87 Sophomore year 1 20 1885 The Triumph of Times: An Unheroic Poem 1 21 circa 1902 Poems 1 22 circa 1890 Authors 1900-1923 American authors 2 1 undated Ariosto, Ludovico and Torquato Tasso 2 2 undated Arnold, Matthew 2 3 undated Arnold, Matthew 2 4 undated Arnold, Matthew and John Ruskin 2 5 undated Austen, Jane 2 6 undated Bacon, Francis 2 7 undated Browning, Robert 2 8 undated Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 2 9 undated Brown, Charles Brockden 2 10 undated Bryant, William Cullen 2 11 undated Burns, Robert 2 12 undated Carlyle, Thomas 2 13 undated Carlyle, Thomas 2 14 undated Carlyle, Thomas 2 15 undated Carlyle, Thomas 2 16 undated Clough, Arthur Hugh 2 17 undated Collins, Wilkie: Moonstone 2 18 undated Cooper, James Fenimore 2 19 undated Cowper, William 2 20 undated Defoe, Daniel 2 21 undated De Quincey, Thomas 2 22 undated Dickens, Charles 2 23 undated Dickens, Charles 2 24 undated Edgeworth, Maria 2 25 undated Eliot, George 2 26 undated Elsmere, Robert 2 27 undated Emerson, Ralph Waldo 2 28 undated Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Journals 2 29 undated Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Journals 2 30 undated Emerson, Ralph Waldo and Thoreau, Henry David 2 31 undated English authors 2 32 undated Franklin, Benjamin 2 33 undated Hawthorne, Nathaniel 2 34 undated Irving, Washington 2 35 circa 1907 Keats, John 2 36 undated Keats, John and Henry Fielding 2 37 undated Lamb, Charles 2 38 undated Landor, Walter Savage 2 39 undated Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 2 40 circa 1916 Lowell, James Russell 2 41 undated Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron 2 42 undated Milton, John 2 43 undated Milton, John 2 44 undated Milton, John: Paradise Lost 2 45 undated Milton, John 2 46 undated Milton, John 2 47 undated Milton, John 2 48 undated Milton, John 2 49 undated Milton, John 2 50 undated Milton, John: Early Poems 2 51 undated Milton, John: Prose 2 52 undated Milton, John: Sonnets 2 53 undated Morris, William 2 54 undated Newman, John Henry 2 55 undated Newman, John Henry 2 56 undated Poe, Edgar Allan 2 57 undated Pope, Alexander etc. 2 58 undated Richardson, Samuel 2 59 undated Rogers, Samuel and Campbell 2 60 undated Rossetti, Christina 2 61 undated Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 2 62 undated Rudyard Kipling And The Short Story 2 63 undated John Ruskin 2 64 undated Scott, Walter, Sir 2 65 undated Shelley, Percy Bysshe 2 66 undated Shelley, Percy Bysshe 2 67 undated Sidney, Philip, Sir 2 68 circa 1909 Shakespeare, William: Anthony and Cleopatra 2 69 undated Smollett, T. (Tobias) 2 70 undated Spenser, Edmund 2 71 undated Spenser, Edmund 2 72 undated Spenser, Edmund 2 73 circa 1908 Sterne, Laurence 2 74 undated Stowe, Harriet Beecher 2 75 undated Swinburne, Algernon Charles 2 76 undated Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron 2 77 undated Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron 2 78 undated Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron 2 79 undated Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron 2 80 undated Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron 2 81 undated Thackeray, William Makepeace 2 82 undated Thackeray, William Makepeace 2 83 undated Trollope, Anthony and Charles Kingsley 2 84 undated Trollope, Anthony: Eustace Diamonds 2 85 undated Whitman, Walt 2 86 undated Whitman, Walt 2 87 1900 Whittier, John Greenleaf 2 88 undated Wordsworth, William 2 89 undated Wordsworth, William: Early Poems 2 90 undated Wordsworth, William: Romanticism vs. Classicism 2 91 undated Various authors 2 92 undated Various authors 2 93 undated Various authors 2 94 undated Various authors 2 95 undated Various authors 2 96 undated Various authors 2 97 undated Various authors 2 98 undated Various authors 2 99 circa 1918 Various authors 2 100 undated Various authors 2 101 undated Various authors 2 102 undated Various authors 2 103 undated Various authors 2 104 undated Subjects 1912-1922 1600-1640 State of England and European literature 3 1 undated 1600-1660 Minor writers (mostly poets) 3 2 undated 18th century 3 3 undated 18th century fiction 3 4 undated 18th century literary criticism 3 5 undated 19th century periodicals 3 6 undated Adam and eve 3 7 undated The age of Pope: minor authors 3 8 undated A midsummer night's dream 3 9 undated The Aeneid 3 10 undated Bibliography 3 11 undated The Brontes 3 12 undated Chaucer's growth in his early poems 3 13 undated Children in literature 3 14 undated Contemporary American verse 3 15 undated Early colonial 3 16 undated The Edinburgh and quarterly reviews 3 17 circa 1917 Elizabethan age 3 18 undated The Elizabethan masque 3 19 undated Elizabethan voyages 3 20 undated Faerie queen 3 21 undated History of pastoral poetry from Virgil to Elizabethan age 3 22 undated History of prose style 3 23 undated The Indian in American literature 3 24 undated Later colonial 4 1 undated Laucelot and elaine 4 2 undated Left the sea 4 3 undated 17th and 18th centuries 4 4 undated The man on show 4 5 undated Milton et. al. on toleration 4 6 undated Minor prose, 1600-1660 4 7 undated The novel 4 8 undated The novel 4 9 undated on bits of paper 4 10 undated Pathos 4 11 undated Poems 4 12 undated Poetry and criticism 4 13 undated Poetry and philosophy 4 14 undated Realism vs. idealism in fiction 4 15 undated Restoration drama 4 16 undated Revolutionary period 4 17 undated Romanticism 4 18 undated Satan 4 19 undated Satire 4 20 undated The short story 4 21 undated Sonnets 4 22 undated The spenserians 4 23 undated Style 4 24 undated Teaching english 4 25 undated Versification 4 26 undated Uncle tom's cabin 4 27 undated The victorian age 4 28 undated Victorian literature 4 29 undated Notes and fragments Scope and Contents note

Contains largely unsorted fragmentary notes on literature and one notebook.

 Notebook, various notes and fragments on literature 5 Various notes and fragments on literature 6 Lecture and teaching materials Series 2 1897-1925 Assignments, English 35 and English 36 7 1 circa 1919 Class notes, English 16 7 2 circa 1905 Class notes, English 17 7 3 undated Class notes, English 23 7 4 undated Class notes, English 23 7 5 circa 1910 Class notes, English 34 to English 36 7 6 undated Class notes, English 35 7 7 circa 1919 Class notes, English 37 and English 38 7 8 circa 1913 Class schedules 7 9 1897-1913 Class schedule and notes 7 10 undated Class schedule and notes, English 36 7 11 undated Class schedule and notes, English 37 7 12 circa 1912 Class notes, English 39 7 13 undated Class notes, English 40 7 14 undated Class notes, English 64 7 15 undated Class notes, English 65 7 16 undated Class schedule and notes, English 65 and English 66 7 17 circa 1903 Exams, English 29 7 18 circa 1920 Exams, English 39 and English 40 7 19 undated Exam, English 160 7 20 1910 September 2 Grades, English 160 7 21 undated Lecture notes 7 22 undated Lecture notes: Cornell course 7 23 undated Lecture notes: speeches to Boston and to Washington alumni 7 24 undated Lecture notes: W.Va. lectures 7 25 undated Lecture notes: W.Va. lectures 7 26 undated Outlines 8 1 undated Survey course 8 2 circa 1906 Outline, English 40 8 3 circa 1920 Student essay: Stephen, Leslie, English 66 8 4 1905 May Student essay: Straffin, Elsie M., English 64 8 5 undated Student essay: Straffin, Elsie M., English 66 8 6 1905 May Student essay: Straffin, Elsie M., English 66 8 7 1905 April Student essay 8 8 undated Student handout 8 9 undated Student outline 8 10 undated Tests 8 11 circa 1919 Personal papers Series 3 1891-1927 Clippings 9 1 circa 1920 1 of 4 folders. Clippings 9 2 1927 2 of 4 folders. Clippings 9 3 circa 1922 3 of 4 folders. Clippings 9 4 1912-1925 4 of 4 folders. The North Carolina Review 9 5 1913 January 5 The Sun 9 6 1917 February 11 The New York Times Book Review and Magazine 9 7 1921 March 31 The Dial 9 8 1910 August 16 Brunonian article 9 9 undated Brunonian article 9 10 undated Brunonian article 9 11 undated Brown Alumni Monthly 9 12 1928 December Printed ephemera 9 13 undated 1 of 6 folders. Printed ephemera 9 14 1895 October 2 of 6 folders. Printed ephemera 9 15 1891-1892 3 of 6 folders. Printed ephemera 9 16 1903-1925 4 of 6 folders. Printed ephemera 9 17 1891-1920 5 of 6 folders. Printed ephemera 9 18 circa 1922 6 of 6 folders. Notes and printed ephemera 9 19 undated 1 of 2 folders. Notes and printed ephemera 9 20 1920-1921 2 of 2 folders. Correspondence 10 1 1921-1927 Correspondence 10 2 1904-1926, undated Post cards 10 3 undated Empty envelopes 10 4 undated Collection information

The collection is arranged in 3 series: 1. Research and writing, 2. Lecture and teaching materials, 3. Personal papers.

The W.C. Bronson papers comprises the professional and personal records of Professor Walter Cochrane Bronson from his time as a student at Brown University through his career as a professor of English at Cornell University, West Virginia University, and Brown University, from which he retired from in 1927. The collection consists of writings from the full span of his career; research, lecture and teaching material; and a small component of personal papers.

The first series, Research and writing, is divided between four subseries: Writings of Walter Cochrane Bronson, Authors, Subjects, and Notes and fragments. Writings consist of personal writings from his time as a student at Brown University through 1926. Authors consist of notes on predominantly British and American authors, arranged in alphabetical order. Named authors are followed by thirteen folders of research notes on multiple authors that have not been separated out. The third subseries consists of research and notes on literary subjects, in particular, these materials focus on period and genre. These notes are similar to those on authors and there is some overlap between the two. The fourth subseries consists of largely unsorted notes and fragments covering a host of authors and topics and includes a personal notebook of W.C. Bronson.

Series 2, consists of lecture and teaching materials. This series includes lecture notes of W.C. Bronson from the range English courses he taught t Brown University as well as materials from courses taught at Cornell University and West Virginia University. This series includes class schedules and notes of W.C. Bronson for English 16-English 160. Also included within the series are limited student assignments and student work from courses taught by Professor Bronson.

The third and smallest series contains personal papers of W.C. Bronson. The series includes limited correspondence, articles and clippings, postcards, and other printed ephemera. Correspondents include students and professinoal colleagues. A significant component of the correspondence is addressed to Bronson at the time of his retirement.

There are no restrictions on access, except that the collection can only be seen by prior appointment. Some materials may be stored off-site and cannot be produced on the same day on which they are requested.

Although Brown University has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it does not claim literary rights. Researchers should note that compliance with copyright law is their responsibility. Researchers must determine the owners of the literary rights and obtain any necessary permissions from them.

W.C. Bronson papers, Ms-1UF-B4, Brown University Archives.

 Administrative information

Additional information

Names Brown University Subjects Brown University--Faculty. English literature--Criticism, Textual English literature--Study and teaching (Higher) Occupations College teachers Types of Materials Ephemera Lecture notes Postcards Research notes RIAMCO Browsing Term Education