| | 1 | Author: | University of Virginia
Library | Add | | | Title: | Tenth Annual Report of the Archivist, Library of the University of Virginia, for the Year 1939-40  | | | | Published: | 2005 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE CLOSE of a decade of activity in the field of manuscripts
and related historical materials by the University
of Virginia offers the temptation to review briefly the
developments in Virginia during the period and to relate them
to the progress of this movement in the South and the nation
at large. It seems especially fitting to do so because the
1930's have been a time of unprecedented advance in manuscript
and archival work. If this progress has been particularly noteworthy
in the southern states, it may be argued that this appears
to be the case only because so little had been accomplished hitherto
in this region. Undoubtedly the renaissance in southern literature,
historiography, and higher education since the World War
has created an increasing demand for the basic source materials
essential to scholarship. Southern research repositories have
profited by the experience of historical agencies of renown in
New England, the Middle Atlantic states, and the Middle West.
Even the "depredation" of private manuscript collections in the
South by northern agents and collectors in the past has resulted
in a net gain to research: the manuscripts that were carried off
were, in most instances, more safely preserved in northern libraries
than in southern attics; resentment over the loss of these
records eventually moved southerners to take positive steps
towards preservation of the abundant materials that remained;
and in so doing, they found much that had been not only undiscovered
or overlooked, but even rejected because of the narrow
viewpoint of an earlier generation. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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