"Autograph" Collection, 1758 - 1990

The personal collection of former Georgetown University Manuscripts Librarian Nicholas B. Scheetz (1952-2016).

The collection includes over 300 sub-collections of bound and loose manuscripts, documents, journals, correspondence, commonplace books, scrapbooks, photograph albums, and other ephemera reflecting Scheetz's interest in Anglo-American literature, politics, and history -- primarily of the 19th and early 20th century.

Highlights include:

1. Letters and other materials from prominent poets, historians, journalists, and members of the aristocracy, including correspondence from Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood member Thomas Woolner, noted poet Walter de la Mare, author Sir Caine Hall, Cincinnati-based publishers Robert Clarke & Company, and the Earls of Minto.

2. War narratives including accounts of the Crimean and Second World Wars, materials related to Japanese Internment, and correspondence from soldiers, political figures, and ordinary citizens from a variety of conflicts. The Erwin Family letters dating from the American Civil War, and a secret diary belonging to a woman named Madeleine in WWII France are particularly compelling.

3. Queer history including materials by LGBTQIA persons ranging from works by American lesbian artist Violet Oakley to a photo album of a trip taken by publisher Roger Senhouse and his lover the writer Lytton Strachey. Particularly rich is a set of correspondence between two British men, Roger Bullock and Barry Hornsby, in the aftermath of the Second World War that appears to trace their romantic relationship over a number of years.

4. A collection of 4 sets of homemade British children's periodicals dated between 1891 and 1915.

5. Commonplace books, diaries, and other personal manuscripts including student notebooks, autograph books, and travel journals belonging to young women in the 19th and early 20th century. Of particular note are notebooks belonging to the Presbyterian missionary Verson Anderson, diaries and drafts of a romance novel by a British woman named Hilda McMullan, and the 1952-1953 diary of Eric von Dembinski, a member of an aristocratic Polish family who claimed a relationship to the British throne despite living in relative poverty in England.

Also included are various miscellaneous materials from missionaries and priests, statesmen, soldiers, and women, including family archives and legal documents.