Books, Maps, and Politics: A Cultural History of the Library of Congress, 1783-1861

Acknowledgments

ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is a pleasure to acknowledge here the many people and institutions who have assisted me in completing this book. My primary debt is to Ezra Greenspan, my adviser at the University of South Carolina, who first suggested to me the possibilities of situating Library of Congress history within the context of the history of the book in America and who then wholeheartedly put his considerable knowledge and experience at my disposal during every stage of composition. Without him, this book simply could not have been written. No one could expect to make a contribution to Library of Congress history without consulting John Y. Cole of the Center for the Book at the Library. Since I first approached him years ago, as a graduate student in Englishwith little specifictraininginlibraryhistory,Johnhasprovided intellectual and material resources to the project and has shown continuing interest in my work in the field, for all of which I wish to thank him. Members of the faculty in American literature and the history of the book in the Department of English at the University of South Carolina have all contributed to my knowledge of the literature and culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America. Among them, I especially thank Joel Myerson, Benjamin Franklin V, Judith James, and Cynthia Davis. x acknowledgments My gratitude is due a number of archivists in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, chief among them Josephus Nelson. I also thank the staffs of the NationalArchives andtheSmithsonianInstitution Archives in Washington, D.C., and the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore. The Faculty Research and Creative Activities Committee of Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) made possible a reduced course load as I was revising this manuscript. Thanks to Andie Hudgins of the Interlibrary Loan Department of the MTSU Walker Library, who worked very hard tracking down resources on my behalf. Paul Wright, my editor at the University of Massachusetts Press, showed unflagging confidence in my work. And I sincerely appreciate the efforts of the anonymous reviewers for the press, who led me down research paths Iwould never havethought toexploreandwhoseinfluence on this manuscript has been profound. A large part of chapter 5 appeared previously as “James Alfred Pearce and the Question of a National Library in Antebellum America” in Libraries and Culture 35, 2 (2000): 255–77. Copyright 娀 2000 by the University of Texas Press. All rights reserved. Thanks to editor Donald G. Davis for granting permission to republish that material here. Books, Maps, and Politics ...