Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Burgess, Gelett, 1866-1951
- Abstract:
- Papers the San Francisco Bay Area poet, critic, artist, and humorist Gelett Burgess. Includes correspondence; manuscripts of novels, stories, poems, articles, plays; manuscript of incomplete autobiography; notebooks; genealogical and biographical data; mid-nineteenth-century journals of Burgess' parents; personalia; bibliographies; scrapbooks; clippings. A few papers of his wife, Estelle (Loomis) Burgess also included.
- Extent:
- Number of containers: 8 boxes, 5 cartons, 5 oversize folders, 2 oversize volumes, 2 microfilm reels, 1 volume (10 linear feet)
- Language:
- English
Background
- Scope and content:
-
The bulk of the Burgess papers were acquired by purchase from Gabriel Engel and Ruth Morissey in 1953 and from Edward Morrill in 1958. The rest of the collection came as gifts from Mrs. Will Irwin, Mrs. William H. Haan, Oliver Onions, Anthony Boucher, Theodore M. Lilienthal, Mrs. Juliet W. T. Pottle, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Waybur, Mrs. Elsie W. Martinez, Homer Croy and Joseph Bransten.
The papers cover the period from 1873-1951, but most of them date from the period after 1900. They consist mainly of correspondence; manuscripts of novels, stories, poems, articles, plays and scenarios, musical comedies, radio programs and lectures, some with related notes; autobiographical and biographical data; diaries; notebooks; scrapbooks; clippings; personalia; bibliographies. The collection also includes papers of his wife, Estelle Loomis Burgess, and journals of Burgess' parents from Kingston, Massachusetts (1847-1855). A list of correspondents is included in this finding aid.
Sketches, drawings, paintings, and photographs have been transferred to the Pictorial Collections.
- Biographical / historical:
-
Gelett Burgess was born on Jan. 30, 1866, in Boston, Massachusetts and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1887 as a civil engineer. After serving a number of years as a draughtsman on survey work for the Southern Pacific Railway and as an instructor of topographical engineering at the University of California, he turned to writing.
His literary career began in 1894 in San Francisco as associate editor of The Wave. During the period 1895-97 he not only served as editor of The Lark but, with Porter Garnett, published Le Petit Journal des Refusées and Phyllida. All three were radical departures from conventional magazines and The Lark, with its originality and the famous Purple Cow verse which appeared in its first issue, gained him considerable fame.
With the demise of The Lark in 1897, Burgess left California for New York to pursue a literary career. By the time of his death in 1951, he had written some 30 books, illustrating many of them also, and had been a frequent contributor to magazines with his short stories, poems and essays. Despite the variety and quantity of his literary output, his name was generally associated with humorous, satirical writing. Included among his most famous works are the Burgess Nonsense Book (1901), Are You A Bromide? (1907), The Heart Line (1907), the satirical Maxims of Methuselah (1907), and Maxims of Noah (1913), Two O' Clock Courage (1934), and Look Eleven Years Younger (1937). His manuals of manners in rhyme for children, the Goop books, have become nursery classics.
Although Burgess traveled widely and lived in New York, Boston, San Francisco, London and Paris, in the public mind he has been identified with San Francisco. In 1950 he returned to California and settled in Carmel, and it was there he died in 1951.
- Physical location:
- For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
Access and use
- Location of this collection:
-
University of California, Berkeley, The Bancroft LibraryBerkeley, CA 94720-6000, US
- Contact:
- 510-642-6481