Table of Contents

The Melville Society Archive is composed of the following separate collections:

Thomas Wendel - 300 volumes
Harrison Hayford - 951 volumes
Merton M. Sealts, Jr. - 269 volumes
Robert D. Madison -129 volumes
General Collection - 600 volumes

Additional collections:
Jay Leyda - 22 volumes that came with the Jay Leyda Papers
Literature of the Sea, donated by Jill Barnum and Haskell Springer
Frederick Douglass, donated by Wyn Kelley

The rest of the papers are stored in boxes. The Melville Society Cultural Project has an ongoing project to create lists of the contents of the boxes. As these lists are completed, they will be put up on the Melville Society website.

Jay Leyda Papers: 9 boxes

A complete Finding Aid has been created for the Jay Leyda Papers.

Melville Society Papers: 7 boxes

The first five boxes house correspondence and materials from the founding of The Melville Society in 1945 until 1981. The proposed creation of a complete edition of the works of Herman Melville is discussed at length in this correspondence. The edition was to be published by Packard and Company of Chicago. The Collected Poems of Herman Melville, edited by Howard P. Vincent, was published by Packard and Company, but the remaining books became the Hendricks House edition. The Hendricks House edition was never completed; eventually, all of Melville’s writings were published in the now-complete Northwestern-Newberry edition of The Writings of Herman Melville. The papers in the sixth box were donated by Dennis Berthold and include records, materials, and incorporation tax documents up until 2005. The seventh box consists of Sanford Marovitz’s Secretary Records 1994-1997. A complete listing has been created for Boxes 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7 and a partial listing for Box 3. As Boxes 3-4 are completed, the listings will be put on the Melville Society website.

Walter Bezanson Papers: 5 boxes

The Walter Bezanson Papers were donated by Walter Bezanson and Gail Coffler. They include correspondence, manuscripts, copies of Melville Society Extracts and off-prints marked by Bezanson, newspaper and magazine clippings, and research materials, especially in reference to Bezanson’s editions of Clarel (both the Hendricks House and Northwestern–Newberry editions) and his Northwestern-Newberry edition of Israel Potter. Complete listings of all five boxes exist.

Joyce Sparer Adler Papers

Lists of the contents of the Adler papers have not yet been created.

The Melville Society’s collection of Melville artworks is augmented each year by a piece of contemporary Melville art created by a living artist.

The following article on the Melville Society Archive appeared in the New Bedford Whaling Museum journal, The Bulletin from Johnny Cake Hill (Summer and Fall, 2010), pp. 8, 16. It was co-written by Wyn Kelley and Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, two founding members of the Melville Society Cultural Project.