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Inventory of the Lute Pease Collection, 1856-1965, bulk 1865-1939
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Collection Details
 
Table of contents What's This?
  • Descriptive Summary
  • Administrative Information
  • Biography
  • Subject matter
  • Persons represented by three or more pieces
  • Items of special interest
  • Arrangement
  • Material transferred

  • Descriptive Summary

    Title: Lute Pease Collection,
    Date (inclusive): 1856-1965,
    Date (inclusive): bulk 1865-1939
    Creator: Pease, Lute
    Extent: 276 pieces
    Repository: The Huntington Library
    San Marino, California 91108
    Language: English.

    Administrative Information

    Provenance

    Gift of Mrs. Virginia Hayward, June 1965

    Access

    Collection is open to qualified researchers by prior application through the Reader Services Department. For more information please go to following URL .

    Publication Rights

    In order to quote from, publish, or reproduce any of the manuscripts or visual materials, researchers must obtain formal permission from the office of the Library Director. In most instances, permission is given by the Huntington as owner of the physical property rights only, and researchers must also obtain permission from the holder of the literary rights. In some instances, the Huntington owns the literary rights, as well as the physical property rights. Researchers may contact the appropriate curator for further information.

    Preferred Citation

    [Identification of item], Lute Pease Collection, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

    Biography

    Lucius Curtis Pease (March 27, 1869-August 16, 1963), born in Winnemucca, Nevada and raised by grandparents in Charlotte, Vermont from the age of five after the death of his parents, made his mark on the world in many fields. Reporter, prospector, editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, his many careers spanned much of the century and took him from the frontier of territorial Alaska to the editorial rooms of the Newark (N. J.) Evening News. Known by the nickname Lute 1 , Pease had come back to the West from Vermont after graduating from high school. Although he never fulfilled his aspiration to study art in Paris, his artistic and literary bent found many outlets for expression. Beginning as a reporter and artist for the Portland Oregonian in the 1890s, he was deeply involved with literature and journalism for the rest of his life. Even during the five years he spent hunting gold and adventure in the Yukon and Alaska, he enlivened the letters and diaries he sent home to relatives with his quick wit and his sketches of people and places. Upon his return from the North, he joined the staff of The Pacific Monthly, a literary magazine in Portland, eventually rising to the post of editor. Before the magazine's absorption by Sunset Magazine in 1912, Pease's intelligent and independent editing made it a journal of progressive reform and literary excellence. Following several years at loose ends, he joined the Evening News of Newark, New Jersey, in 1914. For the next forty years, he remained at the paper, capping a distinguished career with the receipt of a Pulitzer Prise in 1949. From his retirement in 1954 until his death in 1963, he devoted himself to fostering his skills as a painter of portraits and landscapes.
    The collection consists of letters written by Lute's parents to each other during their courtship and during his father's pioneering in Nevada, letters between Lute and various members of his family including his sisters throughout his life, Pease's diaries during his sojourn in Alaska, literary manuscripts authored by Pease, Charles Warren Stoddard, Charles Erskine Scott Wood, and others, some correspondence about literary magazines in the West, and various biographical materials about the Pease family. At the end of the collection are a number of clippings, printed versions of editorial cartoons, Pease's scrapbook and other printed items and ephemera.
    Footnotes:
    1 This nickname is used throughout the collection to distinguish him from his father, with whom he shared first and middle names.

    Subject matter

    Mining and settlement in 1860s Nevada, prospecting and settlement in the Yukon Territory and Alaska 1897-1901, West Coast literary magazines in the early twentieth century, Pease family history

    Persons represented by three or more pieces

    • Hunt, Virginia (Pease) - 17 letters
    • Hutton, Lydia (Furness) - 12 letters
    • Pease, Lucius Curtis - 59 letters
    • Pease, Lute - 19 letters
    • Pease, Mary Isabel (Hutton) - 13 letters
    • Pilcher, George M. - 17 letters
    • Webster, Helen (Hutton) - 7 letters
    • Wood, Charles Erskine Scott - 7 letters
    • Wood, Sara Bard (Field) - 6 letters
    • Five of the C. E. S. Wood letters are photostatic copies of originals housed in the C. E. S. Wood Collection

    Items of special interest

    Letter from James B. Pond to Lute Pease about Mark Twain's meeting with Pease, written Sep. 12, 1895 (HM 51785), a diary kept by Lute Pease in Alaska from Apr. 15 through June 24, 1899 (HM 51734), Lute Pease's letter to Helen (Hutton) Webster and others from Noatak River, Alaska, Dec. 3, 1901, describing life in Alaska and his tasks as a U. S. Commissioner (HM 51759), a 55-page diary-letter to Virginia (Pease) Hunt from Noatak River, Alaska Feb. 28, 1902 (HM 51746), a typewritten manuscript of To the Meadow Lark a poem by C. E. S. Wood with corrections in the author's hand, Feb. 1907 (HM 51828), In Old Bohemia. II. The `Overland' and the Overlanders, an essay by charles Warren Stoddard about The Overland Monthly (HM 51797), a letter from William Simon U'Ren to Pease, Mar. 9, 1908, commenting upon Oregon politics (HM 51805), a letter from Maynard Dixon to Pease, c. 1913, with an ink sketch on recto (HM 51583), a letter from C. E. S. Wood to Pease, May 17, 1917, commenting upon the moral dimension of the European war (HM 51833), a letter from C. E. S. Wood to Pease, Feb. 22, 1928, describing his Alaska experiences (HM 51835), a letter from the Huntington Library to Pease, Apr. 22, 1936, asking if he would donate copies of one or two published cartoons to a budding collection of political cartoons (HM 51637), and Lute Pease's notes about Mark Twain, Jack London, and other prominent figures, c. 1947 (HM 51732).

    Arrangement

    Correspondence and manuscripts are interfiled chronologically in Boxes 1 through 4 while clippings, printed cartoons, sketches and other printed items and ephemera are stored in Boxes 5 and 6 (Lute Pease's scrapbook is kept in the latter box). Several turn-of-the-century newspapers with Pease drawings are kept in an oversize manila folder.

    Material transferred

    • Eight oversize manuscript cartoons are stored in the Rare Book Department
    • Over 100 photographs have been transferred to the Photographic Archives.