Call Number:

C1056

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 1 box
• 0.2 linear feet

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Theodore Spencer Journals, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1937-1947 (inclusive)

Creator:

Spencer, Théodore, 1902-1949

Form:

Diaries--20th century.

Abstract:

Consists of personal journals of Theodore Spencer, American poet and essayist, and distinguished Harvard University literature professor.

A member of the Princeton Class of 1923, Theodore Spencer had a distinguished teaching and writing career. He received a Ph.D from Harvard University in 1928, and remained there as a teacher, becoming the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in 1946. He was appointed lecturer in English literature at Cambridge University, England, in 1939--the first American to be so honored--but the World War prevented him from going. In 1942, Spencer gave the Lowell lectures on Shakespeare, published as Shakespeare and the Nature of Man, his most important work. Spencer also published essays, short stories, and poetry.

The collection consists of two personal journals kept by Spencer from 1 September 1937 to 15 December 1947 and a photograph of Spencer taken in 1945. During the war years, Harvard was a magnet for writers and provided a forum for literary theorists and critics. Through his teaching and writing, Spencer met and entertained many of the most significant modern American and English poets, including W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, John Crowe Ransom, and Allen Tate, as well as influential New Critic I. A. Richards. The journals document Spencer's academic and personal life during this creative literary period.