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Acknowledgments Thanks are due, for permission to reprint materials in their collections , to the Doheny Library of the University of Southern California , Los Angeles, for one item (no. I7); to the Massachusetts Historical Society of Boston for one item (no. I9); to the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, Massachusetts, for five items (nos. J, I I, I2, 49, and ss); and to the Henry E. Huntington Library of San Marino, California, for the remaining forty-eight items in the book. Personal thanks go to Marcus A. McCorison, director, to John Hench, and to Keith Arbour at the American Antiquarian Society for their generous assistance. Because of two extended stays and a number of shorter visits at the Huntington Library, I owe many more debts of gratitude than I can repay here. But special thanks go to Robert Middlekauff (then director) and his wife Beverly for good counsel, assistance, and warm hospitality; also my gratitude is extended to Martin Ridge, who is director of research, and to Mary Wright, who supervises the Rare Book Reading Room. Among all the other helpful members of the Huntington staff, I especially thank Alan Jutzi, curator of rare books, and Tom Langen, who saw to the copying of over 4,ooo pages of material from the rare book collection and who prepared the title-page photographs reproduced herein, except for those to nos. 3 and II, which Marcus McCorison at the American Antiquarian Society provided. There can hardly be finer places to work than the Huntington Library and the American Antiquarian Society. Dean Charles R. Ritcheson, director of the Doheny Library, and his staff were helpful on more than one occasion with my work on this book. So also were the staffs of the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, the Centenary College Library of Shreveport, Louisiana, and the Middleton Library and the Hill Memorial Library of Louisiana State University-and I am grateful. I wish also to thank several institutions for financial support of my work on this book: Louisiana State University by a sabbatical leave; the Huntington Library by a Visiting Fellow's appointment; and, by XXlll XXIV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS research grants, the Earhart Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation , the Armstrong Foundation, and the Wilbur Foundation. Liberty Fund is thanked for having the courage to undertake this large publication project and to see it through to completion. Individuals too numerous to be named here deserve thanks for rendering help great and small, but I must mention Dr. Gregory T. Russell, my graduate assistant during much of the preparation period for the work and later my colleague, who was of great assistance with the details. A similar word of thanks also is due my current graduate assistant, Manuel Brieske. Not least of all I hail all the librarians, those unsung heroes of a book such as this one, and most especially the cataloguers and bibliographers, for their wonderful, anonymous labors: without them we researchers would be lost. Lastly, my family is again thanked for continuing to tolerate my strange habits and for helping me look up this or that and to read proof as time allowed and as I could catch them: Jonathan, Erica, Lisa, and Ellis III. My wife Alverne showed hitherto unsuspected skill as bibliographer and chief assistant in organizing a mass of material . My appreciation of them rises far above mere gratitude. I hope all these benefactors and collaborators, having helped me with this project, will cherish the book and find their expectations for it at least partly fulfilled. E. S. ...

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