Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Finding aid to the James Lewis May Papers
MS.1976.013
No online items
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Title: James Lewis May Papers,
Date (inclusive): 1814-1963
Date (bulk): (bulk 1926-1940)
Accession number: MS.1976.013
Creator:
May, J. Lewis (James
Lewis), b. 1873
Extent: 1762 items
Abstract: The May papers include correspondence
addressed to James Lewis May and his daughter, Barbara Lewis May, as well as
manuscripts of works by May and his correspondents.
Repository:
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Los Angeles, CA 90018
Physical location: Clark Library
Language of Materials:
English.
[Identification of item, subseries and series], James Lewis May Papers, MS.1975.013. Williams Andrews Clark Memorial Library,
University of California, Los Angeles.
Collection is open for research.
Copyright has not been assigned to the William Andrews Clark Memorial
Library. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must
be submitted in writing to the Librarian. Permission for publication is given
on behalf of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library as the owner of the
physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the
copyright holder, which must also be obtained.
Clark Library purchase, 1976.
This collection was originally processed as a separate series within the Oscar Wilde and His Literary Circle Collection, and
as such, is physically housed and interfiled with the Wilde collection under call number "MS. Wilde," even though it is now
described separately.
Many of the manuscript and print materials described within this finding aid have also been cataloged individually. Those
individual records for print materials are available via the UCLA Library's online catalog, while the records for manuscript
materials are accessible only through a physical card catalog located at the Clark.
In 1957, a printed catalog of all Wilde-related works then owned by the Clark Library (approximately 2900 items) was compiled
by John Charles Finzi and published as
Oscar Wilde and his Literary Circle by the University of California Press. Over the course of the next four decades, many new Clark acquisitions were added to
the collection and approximately one-third of the collection was microfilmed at least once.
In 2000, the first version of the Oscar Wilde and his Literary Circle online finding aid, which described
all archival materials in the Clark collections related to Wilde and his circle was written by John Howard Fowler. In 2009,
this original finding aid was separated into several parts, edited and re-encoded by Rebecca Fenning in order to make its
very large size (over 1000 pages) and scope more manageable for researchers. Instead of one guide describing the entire collection,
there are now 5 more easily navigated guides devoted to different components of the collection:
Correspondence,
Manuscripts and Miscellaneous Materials,
Wildeiana,
Forgeries and the
James Lewis May Papers.
James Lewis May was a prolific author, translator, and publisher of the first half of the twentieth century. In 1936, he
published
John Lane and the Nineties,
and throughout the 1920s and 1930s, wrote other studies of writers such as Charles Lamb, George Eliot and Anatole France.
In the 1930s, May converted to Roman Catholicism, and
subsequently wrote a series of works on Cardinal John Henry Newman, Father
George Tyrrell, and issues of interest to English Catholics.
This collection contains correspondence addressed to James Lewis May from various figures in the literary world and from those
in the English Catholic community.
His letters reflect his biographical and critical work on John Lane, Anatole France, Cardinal John Henry Newman and others,
as well as
his growing involvement with the Roman Catholic Church. Many letters are from French authors or concern his translation of
works from the French. Also included here are letters written his daughter, Barbara Lewis May as well as some letters
written between some of his correspondents, manuscript works by May and by some of his correspondents. The final series
described in this finding aid also includes some May family papers dating back to 1814.
This collection is organized into the following series:
- 1. Letters to James Lewis May
- 2. Collections of Letters to James Lewis May
- 3. Letters to Barbara Lewis May
- 4. Miscellaneous letters
- 5. Manuscripts
- 6. May family papers
The James Lewis May Papers are physically housed with and were formerly described as a subset of the papers of Oscar Wilde
and his Circle. The following finding aids describe segments of the Wilde collection, which include reference to and correspondence
between many of the literary and artistic figures represented in the May papers.
-
Note
Oscar Wilde and his Literary Circle Collection : Wildeiana, 1858-1998, undated. MS. Wildeiana.Available via the Online Archive of California. -
Note
Oscar Wilde and his Literary Circle Collection : Forgeries, 1887-1900. MS. Wilde.Available via the Online Archive of California. -
Note
Oscar Wilde and his Literary Circle Collection : Manuscripts and Miscellaneous Materials, 1819-1995. MS. Wilde.Available via the Online Archive of California. -
Note
Oscar Wilde and his Literary Circle Collection : Correspondence, 1819, 1849-1957, 1962. MS. Wilde.Available via the Online Archive of California.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this
collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Lane, John, 1854-1925
Authors--England--20th century
Biographers--England--20th century
Catholic converts--England--20th century
Bles, Geoffrey
Bodley Head (Firm)
Brown, Walter H. (Walter Henry)
Burdett, Osbert, 1885-1936
Cammaerts, Emile, 1878-1953
Dagman, Francis S., 1851-1940
Farjeon, Eleanor, 1881-1965
Jonathan Cape (Firm)
Lion, Leon M., 1879-1947
Lockhart, John Gilbert, 1891-
May, Barbara
O'Brien, Georgina
Reade, F.V.
Rhys, Ernest, 1859-1946
Rooke-Ley, Frank
Thiéry, Maurice