Briefer Notices

Briefer Notices By Henry J. Cadbury The Essex Institute Historical Collections, XCV (1959), 41-51, publishes "John Greenleaf Whittier to Harriet McEwen Kimball: Eight Letters ," edited by Lewis E. Weeks, Jr. It is good to have these simple letters of friendship to a young poetess now in print for the first time. The editing is rather overdone. A personal estimate of the quality of Whittier's poetry in general is the article "What I Had I Gave: Another Look at Whittier" by Hyatt H. Waggoner in the same issue (pp. 32-40) . * * * In the light of newly available materials Norman McCord has written a new appraisal of The Anti-Corn Law League, 1838-1846 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958, 226 pages). Because of the prominence in the League and in the book of John Bright and Joseph Sturge among other Quakers, mention of the book is appropriate here. * * * Mary Schaffer, a pioneer explorer, is the subject of an article, "A Quaker in Buckskin" by Elsie Park Gowan in the Alberta Historical Review , Vol. V, No. 3 (Summer, 1957), 1-6, 24-28. * * * The Library Journal publishes an account of "A Little-Known Friends Library" by Sophia Hall GIidden, LXXXIII (1958), 3070-1, dealing with the excellent collection of records at Friends Meeting House, 221 East 15th St., New York, and properly assigning most of the credit for it to the late John Cox, Jr. * * * Richard D. Gray deals with "Early Plans and Frustrations" as Part I of "The Early History of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal" in Delaware History, VIII (1959), 207-254. The principal initial promoter was the Quaker Thomas Gilpin. Robert Allerton Parker's The Transatlantic Smiths (New York: Random House, 1959, 237 pages) is the skillful and intimate portrayal of the vicissitudes of a New Jersey Quaker family that transplanted itself to England. It deals with Hannah Whitall Smith (author of The Christian 's Secret of a Happy Life, the only Quaker "best seller"), her husband, and the three children, Mary, the friend of Walt Whitman, Alys, the first Mrs. Bertrand Russell, and Logan Pearsall Smith, the literary critic. Celebrities of every variety crowd these pages of family chronicle and gossip covering the century from 1851 to 1951. 56 Briefer Notices57 Writing in the American Quarterly, XI (1959), 157-165, Robert J. Lowenherz gives the background for "Roger Williams and the Great Quaker Debate" in 1672: viz., the Quaker experiences of extreme authority in Massachusetts and Williams' experience of anarchism in Rhode Island. Each side was therefore affected to extreme vigor by the recent past, and the debates must be considered against the problem, partly religious and partly secular. Roger Williams sought a middle way between the poles of absolutism and anarchy and he emphasized those features of Quakerism which seemed to him too individualistic or even immoral. The Guide to the Manuscript Collections in the Library of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, compiled by Elizabeth C. Biggert (Columbus, Ohio, 1953), includes a rather large proportion of Quaker items, not merely the meeting records listed under "Friends," but a number of items connected with slavery, etc., or with Quaker families. The Library of Congress, having completed its collection of all the early editions of the major works of John and William Bartram, publishes in its Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions (XV [1958], 51-59), an inclusive article on "America's First Native Botanists" by J. M. Edelstein. It includes, besides a review of their lives and writings, reference to their important literary influence in belles lettres. "Quaker Relief in the Balkans after 1918" (1945, 107 pages) is a rather inaccessible unit (R-107) in the recently declassified Studies of Migration and Settlement: Report Series (Washington, 1943-45). It was prepared by the staff of "M" Project on the basis of the AFSC archives at Haverford. The Ward Lecture for 1959 by Dorothy Gilbert Thorne is devoted to a limited contemporary topic, Quakerism in Fiction and Poetry Written by Women. With delicacy of literary appreciation she introduces the reader to a variety of writing Quakeresses. Mary Blue Coppock (Mrs. M. L. Coppock, Sr.) writes on "Stella Friends Academy" in Chronicles of Oklahoma, XXXVII (1959), 175-181. Quakers established...