Series 1: Departmental, Faculty and Committee Minutes, 1914-1980 includes a complete set of minutes for departmental meetings and meetings of the faculty, as well as sparse records of three faculty committees: Development Committee (1962 – 1976), Committee on Departmental Students (1962 – 1974), and Committee on Graduate Work (1964 – 1977). Minutes record factual proceedings relating to personnel, teaching, grading, course requirements, resolutions recognizing retirements or deaths of colleagues, and regular reports on library and rare book acquisitions for Firestone Library.

Series 1: Department, Faculty, and Committee Minutes is organized according to type of meeting, and the minutes for each type of meeting are arranged chronologically.

3 boxes

Series 2: Chair's Correspondence, 1952-1959 consists of correspondence from the tenure of Willard Thorp.

Series 2: Chairman's Correspondence, 1952-1959 is arranged by topic.

1 box

Series 3: Faculty Personnel Files is arranged alphabetically by last name of faculty member.

Series 3: Faculty Personnel Files, 1928-1962 contains departmental personnel files for temporary and permanent members of the faculty. Although composed largely of official personnel forms, many files contain significant private correspondence, including letters and telegrams. The files are particularly illustrative of 1) the process of hiring junior faculty, 2) the Department's ability to attract prominent contemporary writers as visiting faculty, and 3) the Department's significant role in the Second World War (both as an educator, and in the active foreign service of many faculty members).

3 boxes

Series 4: Department Major Cards, 1925-1985 consists of the department's official record cards for majors. Cards record grades and instructors for English courses taken freshman and sophomore years, and more detailed information for the upper class years, including departmental courses, instructors and grades, electives, special field reading, thesis title, grade and reader's name, and final department grade. Cards for the Class of 1939 have photographs of each student.

The records within Series 4: Department Major Cards, 1925-1985 are arranged chronologically by class and alphabetically within each class.

18 boxes

Series 5: Student Work, circa 1900-1941 contains both undergraduate and graduate work, the bulk of the which is undergraduate essays on English Renaissance drama, circa 1900-1915, most likely written for an upper-level seminar. Box 23 contains 4 student notebooks – two from the first decade of this century, and two from the 1940s. The notebook labelled "Branch, 201" contains sketches and drawings of more merit than the lecture notes.

Series 5: Student Work is arranged alphabetically by student's name. In cases when the author student's name is unknown, the work is filed under "Anon."

2 boxes

No arrangement action taken or arrangement information not recorded at the time of processing.

Series VI, Department Reports and Documents – A somewhat randomly-composed series of official and semi-official documents including reading lists and, course descriptions dating from 1872 to 1963 (incomplete). Of special note are: "What Price Teaching," (1947) an unofficial survey and analysis by the Department Chairman, Donald Stauffer, of the disparity between the cost of living in Princeton and the salaries paid to the Department's junior faculty. Includes monthly budgets and cost-of-living estimates form each junior faculty member.

1 box

Series 7: The English Club Papers and Scrapbooks falls into two major divisions; the file "Correspondence," contains mostly correspondence with members and guest speakers, as well as a skit spoofing English Department faculty titled "Non Angli Sed Angeli," performed May, 1951 by Department graduate students; and "Scrapbooks," originally three loosely - bound books for 1934 - 1941, 1937 - 1953, and 1954 - 1964. The contents have been photocopied in the order they were placed in the scrapbooks.

Series 7: The English Club Papers and Scrapbooks contains records of The English Club, active 1933 - 1955, which was organized to sponsor informal lectures, and discussions about the literary arts. The Club's membership was composed of the Department's seniors and graduate students, the officers of the Princetonian, the Nassau Literary Review, Theatre Intime, and the Whig-Cliosophic Societies, as well as faculty in the Humanities. Over the thirty years of its existence, speakers included some of literature's most famous authors and critics, including Archibald MacLeish, Theodore Dreiser, Edmund Wilson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner.

1 box

The photocopies of scrapbooks in Series 8: Departmental Clippings and Memorabilia, 1917-1973 were organized to preserve the scrapbooks' original order.

Series 8: Departmental Scrapbooks and Memorabilia, 1916-1973 consists of the Photocopied contents of scrapbooks relating to faculty and personnel (1948-1956 and 1926-1970), academic news (1934-1941), mostly from the Daily Princetonian, and the department in general (1928-1948), as well as a single poster for a departmental event. Most clippings are from Princeton publications (Alumni Weekly, Daily Princetonian), many are from newspapers in Princeton, New York, and Philadelphia. The scrapbooks provide valuable biographical information about faculty, and document student complaints about Department curriculum. The series also includes a file of press releases and clippings kept by the University Department of Publication Information, 1930-1969.

2 boxes

Series 9:Graduate Alumni Conference consists of three reel-to-reel tapes of a conference of Department graduate alumni held June 12 and 13, 1974.

Series 9: Graduate Alumni Conference remains in its original order.

1 box

At the highest level, Series 10: Faculty Members' Files has been arranged alphabetically according to the faculty members' last names. Within the files of an individual faculty member, no arrangement has been performed; the records remain in their original order.

Series 10: Faculty Members' Files, 1924-1998 contains files that belonged to individual faculty members within the Department of English. The files of Albert Elsasser relate primarily to undergraduate curriculum and student advising between 1925 and 1954. The papers of David Robertson relate primarily to department-level activities and decisions between 1983 and 1997. The files of Thomas Roche relate to his project on the history of the English Department as well as other departmental matters. The papers of Neil Rudenstine primarily reflect his teaching activities in the mid-late 1960s. Finally, papers received from Claudia Tate consist of departmental memos from 1995-1998.

6 boxes