HOLLIS ClassicHoughton Library
Theodore Roosevelt Collection
- Overview
- Manuscripts
- Archival Resources
- Printed Works
- Pictures
- Ephemera
- Guides and Collection Publications
- Exhibitions
- Past Exhibitions
- Reproductions and Permissions
Overview
The Theodore Roosevelt Collection, housed in Harvard's Houghton and Widener libraries, is a major resource for study of the life and times of the 26th president of the United States. The collection originated as a research library opened in New York City by the Roosevelt Memorial Association in 1923. It was presented by that organization (known since 1953 as the Theodore Roosevelt Association) to Harvard University, Roosevelt's alma mater, in 1943. The collection includes manuscripts, archival resources, printed works, pictures, and ephemera relating to both his personal and professional life. For an overview of collection holdings and finding aids, consult the HOLLIS catalog. Search by "title" for: theodore roosevelt collection summary
- Contact information is available in the Houghton Staff Directory.
Manuscripts
Personal papers (27,000 items) include TR's childhood and travel diaries; juvenilia; personal prepresidential scrapbooks; speech, article, and book drafts; and letters, chiefly to his family: parents, sisters Anna Cowles and Corinne Robinson, wives Alice and Edith, and children, notably his son Kermit and daughter Ethel. Additional Roosevelt family correspondence and diaries are found in the papers of both sisters, TR's wife Edith, daughter Ethel Derby, and son Archibald. (The collection also includes papers of Progressive editor Edwin Van Valkenburg and labor economist Charles Patrick Neill.)
The Harvard collection complements the Theodore Roosevelt Papers at the Library of Congress, which has the TR presidential collection (letterpress copies of outgoing mail and incoming mail—largely official and presidential or postpresidential, presidential scrapbooks and appointment diaries, and diaries for 1878–1884, all available on microfilm at Harvard); papers of TR's children Alice Longworth, Theodore, Jr., and Kermit, and additional papers of Archibald; also some early Roosevelt materials. Papers of TR's brother Elliott are at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, N.Y.
For further details consult the HOLLIS catalog. Search by "title" for:
theodore roosevelt collection manuscripts theodore roosevelt papers
theodore roosevelt collection manuscripts roosevelt family papers
For individual manuscript collections, including those linked to an electronic finding aid, search by "title" for:
theodore roosevelt collection manuscript inventories
For an array of electronic finding aids, consult OASIS, Harvard's online archival search information system. Search for: MS Am and limit by repository: Theodore Roosevelt Collection
Archival Resources
Other primary source materials include:
- copies of manuscripts in other repositories, notably source files for The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Harvard University Press, 1951–1954, 8 vols.)
- an exhaustive ms. bibliography of TR's writings; chronologies; a chronological file of speech texts; interviews with contemporaries; research notes and book drafts of TR biographers O'Laughlin, Hagedorn, Thayer, Leary, Pringle, Putnam, Lorant, Chessman, Miller, Gable, and Dalton; subject files of various source materials by topic and by period of TR's career
- correspondence, committee minutes, platform drafts, convention proceedings, membership lists, and financial records of the Progressive Party (1912–1916)
For further details consult the HOLLIS catalog. Search by "title" for:
theodore roosevelt collection manuscript copies
theodore roosevelt collection ancillary archival resources
theodore roosevelt collection progressive party archives
Printed Works
The book collection (12,000 volumes, updated periodically) constitutes the Roosevelt class, shelved mainly in Widener Library. It is maintained to be as comprehensive a set as possible of published writings by and about Theodore Roosevelt.
TR's own works include collected sets, individual editions, letters, diaries, speeches, articles, editorials, contributions to books, books with TR forewords or introductions, anthologies, and translations.
Secondary works include reviews of TR's writings, bibliographies, general and special biographies, reminiscences of contemporaries, books dedicated to TR, works by and about members of the Roosevelt family, contemporary documentation and later treatments of each stage of TR's career, memorial publications, fiction, poetry, drama, biographies of associates and other contemporaries, related works of American history, histories and publications of American political parties, and files of contemporary periodicals.
Formats include monographs, dissertations, pamphlets, periodical files and articles, society publications, news clippings, and printed ephemera generally.
For further details consult the HOLLIS catalog. Search by "title" for:
theodore roosevelt collection books pamphlets periodicals
For an online catalog of Roosevelt class items added or recataloged since 1970, consult Harvard's online archival search information system, OASIS.
For the original catalog of the Roosevelt class see below under Guides and Collection Publications. Entries for books and many other printed items (about 6,000) will also be found in the HOLLIS catalog.
Pictures
Photographs (11,000) document TR's public and private life, family, homes, and memorials, with particularly extensive background on the Dakota ranching years (1880s), Spanish-American War, African safari of 1909–1910, and South American expedition of 1913–1914. There are formal portraits, newsreel stills, family and souvenir albums, cartes de visite, cabinet cards, panoramic views, and lantern slides. Picture files also include lithographs, blueprints, drawings, and watercolors.
Political cartoons (4,000) spanning 35 years of TR's public career are found as anthologies, periodical runs, periodical and newspaper clippings and clipping scrapbooks, and original drawings. For further details consult the HOLLIS catalog. Search by "title" for:
theodore roosevelt collection visual materials
theodore roosevelt collection political cartoons
The collection has begun a project to digitize its photographic holdings. For those groups of images now available online search by "title" for:
theodore roosevelt collection visual material inventories
and follow each:
Internet Link
Ephemera
Printed ephemera include campaign literature, broadsides, and newspaper clippings in mounted, collected, and scrapbook form. There are files of diplomas and certificates, sheet music, picture postcards, invitations, programs, banquet menus, campaign buttons and ribbons, and other souvenir artifacts. For further details consult the HOLLIS catalog. Search by "title" for:
theodore roosevelt collection ephemera
Guides and Collection Publications
The Roosevelt class as cataloged on cards in the Widener Theodore Roosevelt Reading Alcove is published as: Theodore Roosevelt Collection: Dictionary Catalogue and Shelflist (1970, 5 vols.), available for sale (clearance sale: $75 plus $10 shipping).
Manuscripts are listed in a set of indexed inventories available in the Houghton Reading Room: The Theodore Roosevelt Collection: Manuscript Accession Records of the Houghton Library (1979, 3 vols.; supplement, 1985), published in microfiche as part of the National Inventory of Documentary Sources in the United States (4.93.93). This finding aid has been essentially superseded by the online resources in OASIS noted above.
A Guide to the Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library, surveys the collection alphabetically by genre/material category and describes materials not included in the two catalogs cited above, along with associated special finding aids. It is available in the Widener Theodore Roosevelt Reading Alcove and the Houghton Reading Room; copies are also for sale ($10).
An introductory leaflet is available on request.
Published in 1998 and still available ($30): Pocket Diary, 1898: Theodore Roosevelt's Private Account of the War with Spain; a Facsimile Edition of the Manuscript Accompanied by Extracts from His Published Recollections and Illustrated with Photographs. Edited by Wallace Finley Dailey. Foreword by Tweed Roosevelt. Introduction by John Morton Blum.
Orders for all collection publications should be addressed to the curator via e-mail.
