Collections A-Z
In addition to general collections and online subscription databases, journals, and ebooks, the Library holds more than 500 named collections which are distinguished by their specialized subject matter, age, uniqueness, or value. Most of the listed collections on this page are located in the John Hay Library. To locate digitized collections, see the list available at the Center for Digital Scholarship site and search the Brown Digital Repository.
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Charles King Newcomb Papers
Manuscript letters, journals, commonplace books and other papers relating to Providence Transcendentalist Charles King Newcomb and his family.Newcomb was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1820 and was graduated from Brown University in 1837. Introduced by his mother, Rhoda Mardenbrough Newcomb, to the teacher and writer Margaret Fuller, Newcomb became part of her literary circle in Providence in the late 1830s and was in turn introduced by her to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Through Emerson, Newcomb met other writers identified with Transcendentalism such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau. Although Emerson encouraged Newcomb as a writer and solicited material from him for publication in The Dial, Newcomb submitted only the first part of his tale entitled "The Two Dolons" to that publication. He nevertheless remained friends with Emerson until the latter's death, even though Emerson was disappointed that he did not publish more. Newcomb resided for a time at Brook Farm but eventually returned to Providence. He served briefly with the Tenth Rhode Island Volunteers during the Civil War, and following the death of his mother, lived in Philadelphia from 1865 to 1871, where he wrote a series of more than one thousand erotic poems titled "Songs, Epigrams, and Sonnets of Love." Newcomb lived in Europe from 1871 onward and is believed to have died in Paris in 1894.
The collection includes many letters and a commonplace book of his mother, as well as the signed autograph poem entitled "The Crucifixion" by Newcomb, dated 10 April 1860.
Source: Alfred G. Litton, from The American Renaissance in New England, Second Series (Gale Group, 2000) in Gale Literature Dictionary of Literary Biography.
Format(s): Manuscripts, Microform, Letters
Library: John Hay
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Access to the collection:
Online Catalog (BruKnow):
General description of the collection available on BruKnow
Charles King Newcomb commonplace books, 1836-1860
Account book of Mrs. Rhoda Newcomb, mother of Charles King Newcomb, Providence, R.I., 1803-1866
Charles King Newcomb notes
Charles King Newcomb journals 1851-1871
Related Collections:
Brown University Archives Collection