Daniel Berkeley Updike correspondence

File — Multiple Containers

Identifier: 004-02-01

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The collection consists of correspondence with Daniel Berkeley Updike, correspondence between others related to Updike’s work as well as essays and manuscripts by Updike. The bulk of the collection includes correspondence between Updike and others related to his printing work and book collecting. While some of the letters are with his close peers and friends, the letters are not personal in nature.

Dates

1878-1959

Creator

Updike, Daniel Berkeley, 1860-1941 (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open under the rules and regulations of the Providence Public Library, Special Collections department.

Biographical / Historical

Daniel Berkeley Updike (1860-1941) was a scholar of typography, American printer and founder of the Merrymount Press. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island on February 24, 1860 to Caesar Augustus Updike and Elizabeth Bigelow Adams. He died in Boston on December 29, 1941 and is buried in Saint Paul-Updike Cemetery in Wickford, Rhode Island.

His entry to the book trade began in 1880 when he was employed by Houghton Mifflin in Boston, Massachusetts. He remained with the company through 1893 including a period with their Riverside Press. In 1893, he opened an independent typography studio. In 1896, he opened Merrymount Press, an independent printing house. Merrymount Press was recognized for excellence and held a reputation for very fine typography, printing, illustration and binding. Updike was a scholar of printing and typographic history. He wrote and published Printing Types: their history, forms and use in 1922, In the Day’s Work in 1924 and Notes on the Merrymount Press in 1934. Updike received the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ Gold Medal in 1922, was a member of the American Antiquarian Society and received an honorary degree from Harvard University in 1929.

Extent

1.2 Linear Feet (3 manuscript boxes)

Language of Materials

English

French

Additional Description

Arrangement

A shelf list exists in the card catalog which describes the items at the individual level. The collection is organized into three main series.

Series 1: Correspondence with Updike Series 2: Related correspondence Series 3: Manuscripts, essays and eulogies

Custodial History

Daniel Berkeley Updike donated his printing collection to the Providence Public Library upon his death in 1941. Stuart C. Sherman, librarian, collected correspondence of Updike with contemporaries in the 1960s and added the materials to larger collection.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of Daniel Berkeley Updike, 1941; Photocopies of the letters to Ray Nash were given by Nash in 1959. Gift of Mrs. Harold Brown, 1960; Gift of Esther Fisher Benson, 1962. Copies of Appleton and Codman letters were purchased from Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities in 1988. Manuscripts given by Stephen Wheatland, 1960 and 1985.

Accruals

No accruals are expected.

Existence and Location of Originals

Original correspondence with Ray Nash is part of the Ray Nash Papers at Dartmouth College.

Original correspondence of William Appleton Codman and Ogden Codman Jr. are part of the Codman Family papers at Historic New England.

Original copies of manuscript materials donated by Stephen Wheatland are unknown.

Related Materials

004-01-01, Updike Collection on the History of Printing 004-03-01, Updike Collection of Book Trade Portraits 004-05-01, Updike Collection artifacts 005-02-01, Daniel Berkeley Updike autograph collection

Separated Materials

Materials collected by Updike were separated into collections based on format. One letter from Alexandre Chatrian to Updike, dated Oct. 10, 1876, is included in the 1962 card catalog but was found missing in Dec. 2018. One folder of 23 letters related to the death of Updike is noted in the card catalog, but is not included in this collection.