Henry Nash Smith Papers, 1927-1986

Summary

Creators:

Smith, Henry Nash

Abstract:

Collection primarily consists of correspondence & research materials pertaining to Smith's published works, lectures and other professional activities and interests. The correspondence files are particularly extensive.

Extent:

Number of containers: 8 boxes, 4 cartons Linear feet: 8.3

Language:

Collection materials are in English

Background

Scope and content:

The Henry Nash Smith Papers came to The Bancroft Library after his death in 1986. For the most part, the present arrangement reflects the original order of the materials as received.

The Papers primarily contain correspondence, personal papers, and research materials pertaining to Smith's published works, as well as his lectures, conference papers, and book reviews. The correspondence files provide a rich resource on the development of Smith's thought and his contributions to the evolving field of American Studies. They contain letters from many prominent writers, including J. Frank Dobie, Jessica Mitford, Alfred Kazin, Wallace Stegner and Robert Penn Warren; from publishing agents; and from such noted American scholars as Leo Marx, Perry Miller, Henry May, Richard Hofstadter, John William Ward, C. Vann Woodward, and John Chapman.

Smith's personal papers consist of biographical information, including memorials. There also are watercolor drawings and pen and ink sketches done by Smith, as well as New Yorker editorial cartoons depicting the impact of technology on American society in the 1950s.

In the research and publications series, there are files on several of Smith's major publications. However, these files contain relatively little in the way of early or heavily revised drafts of Smith's works. The series also includes college papers, copies of lectures delivered by Smith, conference materials, reviews by Smith and about his works, and papers by others on topics of interest to Smith. His notes include reference cards and notebooks, one of which contains notes for Smith's doctoral thesis, the basis for Virgin Land. There also are files of correspondence directly relating to materials in this series.

Biographical / historical:

Henry Nash Smith was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1906. He took his bachelor's degree in English at age 19 from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where he taught from 1927 to 1941, taking time out for his M.A. in English (1929) and his Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization (1940), both at Harvard. He subsequently taught in the English departments of the University of Texas (until 1947) and the University of Minnesota (until 1953), when he was invited by Robert Gordon Sproul to join the English Department at Berkeley—coinciding with his apppointment as the literary editor for the Mark Twain Estate, succeeding Dixon Wecter.

In 1950, following a year as a Fellow of the Huntington Library and Rockefeller Foundation, Smith published Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth, a comprehensive revision of his Harvard dissertation. Virgin Land was immediately recognized as a seminal book in the study of American culture, and it established Smith's standing in the very first rank of the academy. Ten years later, in 1960, Smith likewise transformed the study of Mark Twain when he published the Mark Twain—Howells Letters, in collaboration with William M. Gibson and Frederick Anderson. This edition was the first truly scholarly edition of Mark Twain letters ever published, and it established a new standard of excellence for Mark Twain scholarship as a whole. Two years later, Smith published Mark Twain: The Development of a Writer, considered to be the single most important critical examination of Mark Twain.

In 1964, Smith resigned as editor of the Mark Twain Papers at The Bancroft Library, though he continued to play an absolutely crucial role in the subsequent development of the Mark Twain editions and indeed of scholarly work on American writers in general. During the late 1950's and early 1960's, Smith served both on the Board of Directors of the American Council of Learned Societies and on the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association, both of which were intimately connected with the creation of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and its program for comprehensive editions of American writers. He played a prominent role in the resistance to the Loyalty Oath in 1967 and during the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley.

Smith retired from teaching in 1974, but remained highly active writing critical pieces and at the time of his death had at least two prepared for publication. Henry Nash Smith died in an automobile accident near Elko, Nevada, on May 30, 1986.

(Excerpted, in part, from a memorial to Henry Nash Smith by Robert H. Hirst, CU News, Vol. 41:22, 5 June 1986)

Date	Event
1906	Born in Dallas, Texas
1936	Married Elinor Lucas
1986	Died May 30 in an automobile accident near Elko, Nevada

Education:

Date	Event
1925	B.A., Southern Methodist University in English
1929	M.A., Harvard in English
1940	Ph.D., Harvard in History of American Civilization

Academic Honors:

Date	Event
1946-47	Fellow, Huntington Library and Rockefeller Foundation
1950	Bancroft Prize in American History (Columbia University) for Virgin Land
1951	John H. Dunning Prize (American Historical Association)
1959-69	Member Board of Editors, John Harvard Library
1960-61	Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences
1960	Special Award for Distinction in the Humanities (American Council of Learned Societies)
1962-67	Board of Directors, American Council of Learned Societies
1959-69	Executive Council, Modern Language Association
1965	Fulbright lectureship, Italy Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences Litt.D., S.M.U.
1969	President of MLA
1970	LL.D., Colorado State University
1974	Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Guggenheim Fellow
1976	Jay B. Hubbell Award, American Literature Section, MLA
1981	Member, American Philosophical Society
1984	Litt.D., University of Nebraska

Professional Experience:

Date	Event
1927-41	Instructor to Associate Professor, S.M.U.
1941-47	Professor of English and of American History, University of Texas
1947-53	Professor of English, University of Minnesota
1953-64	Literary Editor of Mark Twain Estate, UC Berkeley
1953-84	Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley (Emeritus, 1974)
1974	Hurst Professor, Washington University
1984	Retired from University of California

Publications: Author

Date	Event
1950	Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth
1962	Mark Twain: The Development of a Writer
1964	Mark Twain's Fable of Progress
1978	Democracy and the Novel: Popular Resistance to Classic American Writers

Publications: Editor

Date	Event
1950	James Fenimore Cooper, The Prairie
1957	Mark Twain of the "Enterprise"
1958	Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
1959	Mark Twain, Roughing It
1960	Mark Twain-Howells Letters (with William M. Gibson)
1967	Popular Culture and Industrialism, 1865-90

Articles in:

• American Heritage
• American Quarterly
• Harvard Library Bulletin
• Huntington Library Quarterly
• Massachussetts Review
• Mississippi Valley Historical Review
• New England Quarterly
• PMLA
• Southwest Review
• University of Texas Studies in English
• Western American Literature
• Yale Review

Acquisition information:

The principal body of the Henry Nash Smith papers was received as a gift to the library from Smith's wife, Elinor Smith, in April 1987. Four additional card files of note cards were received as a gift from Duke University in June 1988.

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

Location of this collection:

UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

University of California, Berkeley, The Bancroft Library

Berkeley, CA 94720-6000, US

Contact:

510-642-6481

bancref-library@berkeley.edu

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