Holdings Liberal Arts and Sciences English Department Stuart Sherman Papers Finding Aid Holdings Liberal Arts and Sciences English Department Stuart Sherman Papers Finding Aid Title: Stuart Sherman Papers, 1903-26
ID: 15/7/21
Primary Creator: Sherman, Stuart Pratt (1881-1926)
Extent: 4.6 cubic feet
Arrangement: By types (correspondence is alphabetically filed).
Subjects: American Literature, Book Reviews, Class Notes, Faculty Papers, Harvard University, Literary Criticism, Nation, New Humanism, Pulitzer Prizes, Students
Formats/Genres: Papers
Languages: English
Papers of Stuart Pratt Sherman (1881-1926), associate professor of English (1907-24), including incoming correspondence concerning department curriculum; invitations to speak; congratulations on honors; arrangements for and comments on books and articles by Sherman; job offers to and from Sherman; awarding of Pulitzer prizes in 1920, 1921, and 1925; Sherman as a champion of the aristocratic humanism of Irving Babbitt and Paul E. More, his shift to a more democratic humanism and his final shift to a more comprehensive acceptance of many points of view; accounts from former students of post-graduate careers (Gerald Carson, Allan Nevins, Sam Raphaelson, Warner Rice, Lew Sarett) and editorial suggestions and criticisms (Henry S. Canby of Literary Review, Wilbur Cross of Yale Review, John Farrar of Bookman, M. A. DeW. Howe of Atlantic Monthly Press, Daniel Longwell, Hammond Lamont, Paul E. More, Irita Van Doren, Carl Van Doren of Nation, Will D. Howe, Maxwell Perkins of Scribner's, Ellery Sedgwick of Atlantic Monthly.)
Other correspondents include Sherwood Anderson, Irving Babbitt, Hamlin Garland, Ellen Glasgow, Vachel Lindsay, Sinclair Lewis, Percy Kay, Allan Nevins, Llewelyn Powys, Burton Rascoe, Ashley Throndike and Oswald Garrison Villard. The papers include copies and originals of letters from Sherman to many of the above on same subjects; clippings of serial publications (1908-26), lecture notes (1906-24), Harvard themes (1903-04) and other early manuscripts, published and unpublished typescripts and manuscripts of essays, talks, addresses and reviews, clippings about Sherman and his writing, diaries (1904-06), journals, notes on reading (1900-26) and related material.
Stuart Pratt Sherman (1881-1926) was associate professor of English (1907-11); professor of English (1911-24); and chair of the English Department (acting, 1910; 1914-24) at the University of Illinois (UI). He was an educator and one of the leading literary critics of his era.
Sherman was born in Anita, Iowa, on October 1, 1881, to parents Ada Pratt and John Sherman. He spent his childhood in Iowa, California, and Vermont. He graduated from Williams College in 1903 before earning a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1906 with a dissertation on English playwright and poet John Ford (1586-ca. 1639). Sherman served as instructor of English at Northwestern University (1906-07) before he accepted a position at UI in 1907. He was known for his scholarship on Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). As a critic, he was a proponent of what he perceived to be traditional American literature, aligning him with the antimodernist, Nativist literary movement and the new humanism of his Harvard mentor Irving Babbitt (1965-1933) and critic Paul Elmer More (1864-1937). His intellectual position famously put him at odds with his contemporary, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956). Sherman's published works included Matthew Arnold: How to Know Him (1917), On Contemporary Literature (1917), Cambridge History of American Literature (co-editor, 1918) and The Genius of America (1923). He also served as contributor to The Nation. In 1924, he left UI to become editor of Books, a supplement of the New York Herald Tribune, which he helped make a leading journal of literary criticism. One of his final major publications, Critical Woodcuts (1926), is widely viewed as reflecting a later shift in Sherman's critical approach and a softening toward modernist approaches and different literary perspectives.
Sherman married Ruth Bartlet Mears in 1906, and they had one son. He died on August 21, 1926, as a result of a canoe accident on Lake Michigan.
Sources:
Wikipedia, s.v. "Stuart Sherman," accessed May 20, 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Sherman.
George E. DeMille, "Stuart P. Sherman: The Illinois Arnold," The Sewanee Review 35, no. 1 (January 1927): 78â??93, accessed online May 20, 2020, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27534099?seq=1.
"Stuart Sherman Papers," University Archives, UIUC, accessed May 20, 2020, https://archon.library.illinois.edu/?p=collections/controlcard&id=2423.
MaryJean Gross and Dalton Gross, "Sherman, Stuart Pratt," American National Biography, accessed January 21, 2021, https://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-1601497.
American Literature
Book Reviews
Class Notes
Faculty Papers
Harvard University
Literary Criticism
Nation
New Humanism
Pulitzer Prizes
Students
URL: https://files.archon.library.illinois.edu/uasfa/1507021.pdf
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