Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Hart, James David, 1911-1990
- Abstract:
- The James D. Hart Papers are the professional files of an educator and director of The Bancroft Library. Born in San Francisco in 1911, Hart was a fifth generation Californian with a passion for books and fine printing. His scholarly career at UC Berkeley included distinguished research, teaching, and publication. The collection contains extensive correspondence with authors, printers, and prominent Californians; drafts for articles, books, and other writings; speeches; material related to his academic career, and a small amount of personal papers.
- Extent:
- Number of containers: 24 boxes, 44 cartons, 1 card file box, 2 oversize boxes, 1 oversize folder. Linear feet: circa 70
- Language:
- English
Background
- Scope and content:
-
The James D. Hart Papers are the professional files of an educator and director of The Bancroft Library. Born in San Francisco in 1911, Hart was a fifth generation Californian with a passion for books and fine printing. His scholarly career at the University of California Berkeley included distinguished research, teaching and publication. The collection contains extensive correspondence with authors, printers, and prominent Californians; drafts for articles, books and other writings; speeches; material related to his academic career, and a small amount of personal papers.
- Biographical / historical:
-
James D. Hart, a fifth-generation Californian, developed an early passion for fine books and fine printing. During high school at the Menlo School, Menlo Park, California, he came to know Edwin and Robert Grabhorn at the Grabhorn Press of San Francisco, and persuaded them to design and print The Menlo Musketeer, the school annual during Hart's senior year in 1928. Fine printing of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries remained a lifelong specialty of Hart's.
After earning his A.B. degree at Stanford University in 1932, he earned his M.A. degree in English at Harvard University in 1933, following it with the Ph.D. in 1936. Joining the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley in 1936 he commenced a long career of distinguished research, teaching, publication, and service at the University. His lectures on American literature were among the most popular offered in the Department of English. He served at chairman of the English Department in 1955-1957, and again in 1965-1968.
Hart's publications include works on Frank Norris, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Richard Henry Dana, this last the subject of his thesis at Harvard University. In 1950, Oxford University Press published his pioneering work, The Popular Book: A History of America's Literary Taste. But his most widely known publication was his classic Oxford Companion to American Literature, which went through five editions during his lifetime, and remains a standard reference work.
He also served as vice chancellor at Berkeley from 1957-1960. Throughout most of his career at Berkeley, Hart served on the Academic Senate Library Committee, and also on the Subcommittee for The Bancroft Library. In 1961-62, he served as acting director at Bancroft, and in 1970 was appointed its permanent director.
Other academic appointments during Hart's career included visiting professorships at Upsala, Sweden in 1950 and Harvard University in 1964. He chaired the Marshall Scholarship Committee for the Western United States from 1959 to 1963. He was decorated a Commander of the British Empire in 1963 for promoting Anglo-American relations. In later years he served as a trustee of Mills College, Oakland, California, 1970-78, and again from 1979, and as a trustee Fine Arts Museums San Francisco, 1983 until his death.
- Acquisition information:
- The James D. Hart Papers were given to The Bancroft Library by James D. Hart, in several installments, during the course of his tenure as Director of The Bancroft Library.
- Physical location:
- Many of the Bancroft Library collections are stored offsite and advance notice may be required for use. For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
- Rules or conventions:
- Finding Aid prepared using Describing Archives: a Content Standard
Access and use
- Location of this collection:
-
University of California, Berkeley, The Bancroft LibraryBerkeley, CA 94720-6000, US
- Contact:
- 510-642-6481