Provenance of the Voltaire Correspondence in the Hoose Library of Philosophy
Karen Howell and Ross Scimeca, December 2016
The Purchase of the Letters
In his 30 November 1945 report to Rufus Bernhard von KleinSmid (1875-1964; President of the University of Southern California, 1921-1947[1]), Christian R. Dick (the University Librarian at that time) notes:
According to USC Archivist Claude Zachary’s email of 01 June 2016, the Voltaire letters were acquired by the Libraries for $123.00, based on “information from the monthly report of Librarian Christian Dick, and from the annual report of the Acquisitions Department.” There was no information about the seller’s identity in Dick’s reports.“Among the notable acquisitions of the month were 32 items relating to Voltaire. The collection contains thirteen original autograph items by Voltaire, sixteen letters of Frederick the Great, one autograph letter by Louis C. A. Valliere, and two by von Bassewitz. This collection is to be housed in the Hoose Library of Philosophy[2]” (p. 6).
In a subsequent email of 03 June 2016, Claude Zachary included a scan of the “description of the letters from the bookseller’s catalog that is in our file.” The description is numbered as Item 1706 and titled “Voltaire, Fr. M. Arouet de (1694-1778) A Fine Collection Original Letters by Voltaire and His Circle.[3]” The listing price was $122.50 ($0.50 less than the purchase price), and the description of the collection is more detailed than in Christian Dick’s report. Unfortunately, the scanned entry does not reveal the publisher of the catalog.
The existence of this collection was known by Theodore Besterman[4] (probably as photographs sent to him in Geneva), as is evidenced in his various publications of Voltaire’s correspondence. He identified most of the letters in our collection as: “[manuscript] Hoose, fF 840, V935d”[5]. In the Electronic Enlightenment Project[6] [EE] Besterman’s identification of the manuscripts is more complete[7]:
“James Harmon Hoose Library of Philosophy, USC Libraries, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California [state], United States.
SHELFMARK: MS fF840, v935d
DESCRIPTION: Copy of original document: old Transcription.
PROVENANCE: Cosmopolitan science and art service company (New York 1945),
cat. 17, in no. 1706.
COMMENTS: Photographic or contact reproduction available in the Besterman Collection, Geneva[8].”
The provenance noted above matches the entry no. 1706 in the scan of the bookseller catalog’s page in the USC Archives, and the year 1945 is the year when USC acquired the Voltaire letters.
The Cosmopolitan Science and Art Service Company was a small publishing and bookselling business in New York founded by Dr. Ludwig Schopp, and the first publisher of Traditio: Studies In Ancient And Medieval History, Thought, And Religion. In the Editors’ Foreword to the Fiftieth Anniversary Volume of Traditio, Dr. James J. O’Donnell writes that Traditio was founded in 1943 by German émigré scholars, and that Dr. Schopp published and marketed the journal until his business went into receivership in 1948.
The Driving Force Behind the Voltaire Letters’ Purchase
It is most likely that this purchase was directed by Dr. Ralph Tyler Flewelling (1871-1960), the founding Director of the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California from 1929-1954. From the time he arrived at USC in 1917, he was vigilant in acquiring rare and unique items for the Hoose Library of Philosophy. Dr. Flewelling’s extraordinary influence in founding and building the collections of the Hoose Library of Philosophy is detailed in Wallace Nethery’s biography (Nethery, 1976) and John Shook’s article in the Dictionary Of Modern American Philosophers (Shook, 2005).
The Flewelling Collection acquired for the Hoose Library of Philosophy and now residing in the USC Libraries Special Collections, consists of medieval manuscripts, Renaissance incunabula and early editions of seminal works in philosophy of the 16th and 17th centuries. The collection consists of approximately 2,000 volumes. Although most of the rare items pertain to major author in the history of philosophy from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, there are also many individual works dealing with theology, law, and political theory.
For example, the manuscript collection includes a beautiful illuminated copy of Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae, and a large illuminated volume that is a commentary to Peter Lombard's Sentences. Among the incunabula are early editions of Albertus Magnus, Dun Scotus, William of Ockham, and Plotinus. Within the print collection are Migne's Patrologiae Latina (387 volumes) and several 18th century editions of Diderot’s Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et métiers. Other rarities include first editions of Giordano Bruno and the first collected edition in two volumes of the works of Galileo Galilei (1655).
Sources
Cosmopolitan Science and Art Service Company. Voltaire, Fr. M. Arouet de (1694-1778) A Fine Collection Original Letters by Voltaire and His Circle. New York, 1945, cat.17, entry no. 1706. See PDF scan.
Dick, Christian R. . “To the President of the University of Southern California. Report of the University Libraries for the month ending November 30, 1945.” University Archives.
“FOREWORD.” Traditio, vol. 50, 1995, pp. 1–8.
www.jstor.org/stable/27831907.
Also at http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/traditio/essay.html
Nethery, Wallace. Dr. Flewelling & the Hoose Library: Life and Letters of a Man and an Institution, University of Southern California Press, Los Angeles, 1976.
https://library.usc.edu/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/0/0/5?searchdata1=82720{CKEY}
Price, Ross E. "Wallace Nethery, ‘Dr. Flewelling and the Hoose Library’ (Book Review)." Journal of the History of Philosophy 18.2 (1980): 249. ProQuest. Web. 16 Dec. 2016.
Shook, John R., ed. “Flewelling, Ralph Tyler (1871-1960).” Dictionary Of Modern American Philosophers (1). London, GB: Thoemmes Continuum, 2005. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 16 December 2016.
https://library.usc.edu/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/0/0/5?searchdata1=4416623{CKEY}
Zachary, Claude. “RE: Voltaire Letters in Special Collections.” Message to Danielle Mihram, cc: Ross Victor Scimeca, Karen M. Howell. 01 June 2016. E-mail.
Zachary, Claude. “RE: Voltaire Letters in Special Collections.” Message to Danielle Mihram, cc: Ross Victor Scimeca, Karen M. Howell. 03 June 2016. E-mail.
[2] The Hoose Library of Philosophy is located in Mudd Memorial Hall of Philosophy which was dedicated in 1930.
[3] See scanned copy
[4] Any correspondence exchanged by Besterman and members of the Hoose Library could not be found in our University Archives.
[5] See, as one example: [Voltaire] Correspondance, ed. Theodore Besterman. (Paris : Gallimard, 1977-1983 (13 Vols.). Curtis: Please touch base with Mike Jones: this link is no longer working since the transfer to Alma/Primo system: https://library.usc.edu/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/0/0/5?searchdata1=237331{CKEY}. This edition, found in most college libraries (because it is relatively affordable), is known as the Series “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.” The definitive and monumental edition of Voltaire Works (including his correspondence) is the Œuvres complètes de Voltaire (OCV) published by the Voltaire Foundation (Oxford University): http://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/news/blog/%E2%80%98les-%C5%93uvres-compl%C3%A8tes-de-voltaire%E2%80%99-first-25-years-%E2%80%93-pioneers
[6] Electronic Enlightenment Project, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, 2008-2018 (http://www.e-enlightenment.com/ - access via subscription).
[7] See, in EE, letter D2605: Voltaire’s letter to Frederick dated 1742-05-15.
[8] Musée Voltaire, Bibliothèque de Genève, Rue des Délices 25, 1203, Genève. http://institutions.ville-geneve.ch/fr/bge/connaitre-la-bibliotheque/sites/musee-voltaire/presentation/
