Consists of the correspondence of George Palmer Putnam. Notable correspondents include Washington Irving, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and George Sumner, as well as numerous authors related to his magazine.
This series is arranged into four subseries: "Private", Putnam's Monthly Magazine, Author's Letters, and Scrapbook.
This subseries contains approximately 800 letters, arranged alphabetically by name of correspondent. Putnam had ties with some of the greatest literary figures of his day, including Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. However, the following names of correspondents in this subseries are representative of how Putnam's circle extended beyond solely literary people to figures eminent in other walks of life who were also literary: Edward Everett who, in addition to teaching Greek literature at Harvard College, held office as Governor of Massachusetts; Richard Henry Dana, lawyer as well as author, later presiding over Jefferson Davis's trial for treason; physician and editor Oliver Wendell Homes, founder of the Atlantic Monthly and father of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; Julia Ward Howe, poet and suffragist; militant abolitionist Congressman Charles Sumner: and John Pendelton Kennedy, Secretary of the Navy under Millard Fillmore. Also represented are William Cullen Bryant, who, in addition to being a popular poet, was editor of the New York Evening Post; Evert Augustus Duyckinck, who, starting in 1845, edited "The Library of American Books," for Putnam & Wiley; and scientist Joseph Henry, who taught at Princeton University from 1832 to 1846.
Arranged alphabetically by correspondent.
Almost as large a subseries as A is comprised of approximately 700 letters of inquiry from potential contributors, many addressed to Frederick Briggs, editor of Putnam's Monthly Magazine. Among the great variety of authors represented there are: educator Elizabeth Palmer Peabody; George Ripley, who was a founding editor of The Dial; editor and lawyer John Osborne Sargent; editor and publisher David Marvin Stone; journalist and teacher Frederick William Thomas; poet Frederick Goddard Tuckerman; clergyman Charles Timothy Brooks; and Southern writer John Esten Cooke. The most notable in the list is Herman Melville. These letters consisted of two groups, when purchased, and so they have been maintained as two separate alphabetical units in this subseries.
Arranged alphabetically by correspondent.
The correspondence pertaining to Putnam's Monthly Magazine includes two signed autograph letters of Herman Melville, as well as the offset of a third. A letter to Putnam by Melvilee, dated 12 June [1854], was at some point removed from the collection before it came to Princeton. It was offered for sale at Christie's on 8 October 1991, but was not purchased by Princeton. Princeton University Library has a Herman Melville Collection, containing copies of other Melville correspondence together with letters and other materials relating to Willard Thorpe's research on Melville. Original Melville holdings at other repositories include: correspondence in the publishing records, 1817-1929, of Harper & Bros. at Columbia University Library, and the Herman Melville Papers at Houghton Library, Harvard College.
Consists of about 150 letters, arranged alphabetically, many of them addressed to Frederick Saunders, co-editor of Homes of American Authors. Many of those named here overlap with names in other subseries.
Arranged alphabetically by correspondent.
The earliest letter preserved here is a facsimile of an 1813 letter from Sir Walter Scott. Original correspondence includes letters from Bayard Taylor, Robert Cooke, Washington Irving, James T. Fields, and Hugh McCulloch, Secretary of the Treasury under President Andrew Johnson. The two letters from Hugh McCulloch, Secretary of the Treasury Department, refer to Putnam's dismissal from his post as collector of internal revenue for the eighth district of New York. Putnam had been removed from office by President Andrew Johnson for refusing to pay a political assessment levied upon office-holders. He was commended by the Secretary of the Treasury for his integrity.
The bulk of the correspondence in the scrapbook is from traveller and translator Bayard Taylor, spanning the years 1859 to 1863. Taylor was during part of this time (1862) in St. Petersburg, Russia, with the U.S. legation.
The majority of the clippings consist of such material as bulletins written by Putnam from England as a foreign correspondent for The New World and The Evening Post, but there are also numbers of Harper's Weekly dating from the 1880s. George William Curtis, Putnam's friend and associate in the 1850s, had become editor of Harper's Weekly in 1863.
The scrapbook consists primarily of clippings and correspondence, but there are also pressed flowers and some printed items related to Putnam's publishing company such as a trade list dating from 1849. Several items relate to the magazine: a notebook containing handwritten copies of letters from contributors, among which are copies of letters from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edward Everett; an 1852 draft of a survey letter intended to be sent to prospective contributors which outlines the nature and mission of the magazine. The letter indicates that the magazine hopes to find both a popular and a high-brow audience and aims to become "an organ of American thought."
Not arranged according to any arrangement scheme.