Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

Correspondence, memoranda, notes, manuscripts, addresses, and printed materials of Macmahon, including his course outlines and lecture notes, travel logs, and extensive files of notes and manuscripts on aspects of federalism and governmental administration. Charles A. Beard and Randolph S. Bourne were both personal friends of Macmahon, and the files contain letters from them as well as notes and correspondence relating to them. Also, a three-volume bound photocopy of the typescript of Macmahon's "Conflict and Consensus in Democracies" 1969.

Notebooks filled with Nelson's ideas and notes on art and poetry, as well as various other subjects, such as translations, women, liberty and democracy, and Americanization, which last shows his bitterness at not having achieved recognition as a creative artist in this country. Also included are quotations from numerous writers (including Samuel Loveman's "The triumph of anarchy" copied from the author's manuscript), with his criticisms on several of them (Stagnelius, a Swedish poet, Amy Lowell, Swinburne, Ezra Pound), on Gounod and Berlioz, on the sculptor Flaxman, and on Nietzsche. There are drafts of letters to various people, and to newspaper editors. Of particular interest is the letter to Hart Crane (see Notebook 1920 November-1921 June), circa May 1921, on whom he had considerable influence, even though their friendship was of brief duration.