Guide to the Edwin Herbert Lewis Papers 1886-1939


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Table of Contents

• Descriptive Summary (1)
• Information on Use
• Access
• Citation
• Biographical Note (12)
• Scope Note
• Related Resources
• Subject Headings
• INVENTORY (5)
• Series I: Correspondence
• Series II: Diaries
• Series III: Notebooks (1)
• Series IV: Teaching Materials
• Series V: Writings (4)
• Series VI: Memorabilia

Descriptive Summary

Information on Use

Access

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Citation

When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Lewis, Edwin Herbert. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

Biographical Note

Edwin Herbert Lewis, rhetorician, novelist, and poet, was born in Westerly, Rhode Island, in 1866. He received an A.B. and A.M. from Alfred University in 1887, a Ph.D. in Latin from Syracuse University in 1892, and in 1894 was awarded the first Ph.D. in English by the University of Chicago. At the University of Chicago, he was successively a Fellow in English (1892-1893), Assistant in Rhetoric (1893-1894), Associate in Rhetoric (1894-1895), Instructor in English (1895-1896), and Associate Professor of Rhetoric (1896-1899). During this period, he completed his first works for publication: his dissertation, The History of the English Paragraph (1894), A First Book in Writing English (1896), and An Introduction to the Study of Literature (1899).

In 1896, while still teaching at the University of Chicago, Lewis joined the faculty of the Lewis Institute in Chicago as Associate Professor of English (1896-1899). The Lewis Institute, established in 1895 with a bequest from the estate of Allen C. Lewis, was a polytechnic school offering training in mechanical arts, liberal arts, and domestic economy for high school and college students. After resigning his position at the University of Chicago in 1899, Lewis remained on the faculty of the Lewis Institute as Professor of English until his retirement in 1934. In addition to his duties as a teacher, Lewis was also named to a number of administrative posts at the Institute, including Examiner of the Collegiate Division, Dean of College Students, and, after 1914, Dean of the Faculty. Working closely with George N. Carman, the Director of the school, Lewis was a vigorous advocate of the Institute's vocational curriculum, but his hopes for a strengthened collegiate program were often frustrated by financial constraints and a Board of Trustees unwilling to consider substantive reforms.

During his years at the Institute, Lewis continued his publication of basic textbooks in English, including Specimens of the Forms of Discourse (1900), A Text-Book of Applied English Grammar (1902), A Second Manual of Composition (1903), Business English (1911), and Senior High School English (1934). He also wrote a book of juvenile fiction, Almost Fairy Children (1909); a collection of verse, University of Chicago Poems (1923); and three novels, Those About Trench (1916), White Lightning (1923), and Sallie's Newspaper (1924). Lewis completed a final, unpublished novel, Belief, during retirement in Palo Alto, California shortly before his death in 1938.

Scope Note

The Edwin Herbert Lewis Papers contain correspondence, diaries, notebooks, manuscripts, teaching materials, offprints, photographs, and memorabilia. Correspondents include Rabindranath Tagore and George Carman. The collection also includes the words to the University of Chicago "Alma Mater" which Lewis wrote in 1894.

The Collection is comprised of six series: Series I: Correspondence; Series II: Diaries; Series III: Notebooks; Series IV: Teaching Materials; Series V: Writings; and Series VI: Memorabilia

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Subject Headings

• Tagore, Rabindranath, 1861-1941
• Lewis, Edwin Herbert, 1866-1938
• Carman, George Noble
• University of Chicago -- History
• Lewis Institute
• University of Chicago -- Songs and music
• Students' songs
• Alma maters (Songs) -- Illinois -- Chicago

INVENTORY

The small group of chronologically organized correspondence in this series includes exchanges with publishers and friends such as Sir Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet and philosopher, as well as several letters to George N. Carman regarding efforts to improve educational standards at the Lewis Institute. One folder contains correspondence with Janet Lewis Winters concerning the research and writing of her historical novel, The Invasion. The series also includes a group of letters written by Lewis in 1921 from his summer home at Everens Point, Ontario; these letters, which describe the scenery and residents of the area and recount the experience of building a cabin, are mounted in a loose-leaf binder with sketches of the Everens Point property and photographs of the Lewis family.

Lewis's diaries, documenting the daily routine of his life from 1899 to 1937, are arranged here in chronological order. The diaries contain notes on Lewis's friends and professional colleagues at the University of Chicago and the Lewis Institute, information on the course of his professional career, and remarks on the progress of his literary work.

In addition to daily diaries, Lewis kept a series of notebooks in which he recorded drafts of lectures and other talks, examination questions, comments on student papers, poetry, and miscellaneous aphorisms and observations. The earliest of these notebooks preserves class notes from Professor Paul Shorey's 1894 seminar on Literary Criticism and Rhetoric of the Ancients.

These notes, lists, and other materials, all from Lewis's years at the Lewis Institute, reveal his fascination with the development of scientific knowledge and the etymology of words and personal names.

The series of papers devoted to Lewis's writings includes a printed copy of his University of Chicago dissertation and drafts of three lengthy unpublished works: Belief, The Idealism of the Bible, and Just Alike. While the drafts of Belief and Just Alike are typewritten and thus presumably in their final form, the manuscript of The Idealism of the Bible is partially handwritten and seems to reflect an earlier state of composition.

The series contains both published and unpublished works. Of particular note is a tribute to Rabindranath Tagore written for the Chicago Literary Club in 1917. Poetry, the third sub-series, includes an autograph copy of the University of Chicago "Alma Mater". Written in 1894 for performance by the Men's Glee Club, the "Alma Mater" was set to music originally composed by Frank N. Mandeville as the school song of the University of Rochester. A second Lewis poem, "Mater Humanissima," was written for the University's fifteenth anniversary in 1906 and was subsequently incorporated with the "Alma Mater" and other related verse in University of Chicago Poems.

The series also includes a variety of speeches prepared for public and private occasions. Titled and dated manuscripts are arranged chronologically by date of delivery, followed by undated and untitled material. Two of the most important were delivered before sessions of the American Philosophical Association: "The Origin of Certain Philosophical Words" in 1930, and "What a Linguistic Contextualist Thinks of Philosophers" in 1935. Many of Lewis's other addresses explore the sequence of modern scientific discoveries and examine the distinction he draws between "Science and Literature" or "Physics and Poetry".

The miscellaneous memorabilia in this series consists largely of newspaper clippings and other material related to the Lewis Institute and the Seventh-Day Baptist church. The six photographs of Hugo Händler are mementos of a life-long friend Lewis first met in Rome in 1889.