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Finding aid in repository
This collection is arranged in four series.
This collection is located off-site. You will need to request this material at least three business days in advance to use the collection in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room.
This collection has no restrictions.
The Saunders collection consists primarily of correspondence (letters and greeting cards) to friends and business clients, and materials related to Whitman - handwritten bibliographies, reprints of poems on greeting cards, notes, articles, photographs and programs.
There are also family files consisting of newspaper clippings and personal papers.
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Henry Scholey Saunders papers; Box and Folder; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.
Reproductions may be made for research purposes. The RBML maintains ownership of the physical material only. Copyright remains with the creator and his/her heirs. The responsibility to secure copyright permission rests with the patron.
Source of acquisition--Sprague, Mrs. Frank J. Method of acquisition--Gift; Date of acquisition--1952. Accession number--M-52.
Henry Scholey Saunders was born in 1864 in London, Canada. He married Georgina Helen Taylor on October 10, 1887 and they settled in Toronto for the rest of their lives. They had two children, a son, Harry Ernest, and a daughter, Ruth Mercer, who died at the age of two.
Saunders was a Toronto cellist, collector, bibliographer, and independent Walt Whitman enthusiast. He was a self-taught bookbinder, painter and typesetter, skills he used to write and produce his own books on Whitman's poems in limited quantities, which he gave to friends and kept for his own Whitman collection. His method of publishing was unique: he typed, bound, and carefully catalogued these books by hand. He ultimately sold his collection to Brown University in 1932. His only published work was Parodies on Whitman (1923).
Saunders died on October 25, 1951 at the age of eighty-eight.
Cataloged Christina Hilton Fenn 09/--/89.
Papers processed by Marilyn Chin (Queens College, 2011).
Finding aid written by Marilyn Chin (Queens College, 2011) March 2011.
No additions are expected
Henry Scholey Saunders Vertical File Manuscript, 1945-, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University.
Collection is processed to folder level.
Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. Contact rbml@columbia.edu for more information.
This series consists primarily of letters written to Mrs. Frank J. Sprague, a close friend of Saunders and to whom he gave copies of his Whitman books. Other letters were to business clients.
Materials in this series include newspaper clippings such as an obituary written by Mrs. Frank J. Sprague in the Long-Islander newspaper in 1951, a typed document about the Saunders' Reunion Fund and family photographs.
Much of the items in this series are typed Whitman's poems (excerpts and complete) by other people, bibliographies, notes and articles about Whitman. There are also photographs of Whitman, his home, and Saunders' personal bound book collection.
This series contains hand painted watercolor greeting cards from Saunders to Mrs. Frank J. Sprague.