Conditions Governing Use

Scrapbooks are sometimes brittle, with loose items. Handle with care.

Conditions Governing Access

Preferred Citation

MSS 6453, James Southall Wilson papers, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library.

Biographical / Historical

Scope and Contents

Scrapbooks, photo albums, correspondence, travel diary, home movies of the Wilson and Davison families. 28 scrapbooks and loose correspondence related to three generations of the family of James Southall Wilson, with much material on the University of Virginia. Persons represented significantly include James Southall Wilson (1880-1963) and Julia Tyler Wilson (1881-1965);Charles Marshall Davison, Jr. (1914-1995) and Alida Wilson Davison (1913-1995); and Katharine "Kit" Stonestreet Davison (1943-).

Related Material

Previous collections of James Southall Wilson include:

MSS 6453-a Papers of James Southall Wilson (literary correspondence with Hervey Allen, Emily Tapscott Balch, James Branch Cabell, John Fox, Ellen Glasgow, DuBose Heyward, Sinclair Lewis, Rosewell Page, Thomas Nelson Page, Thomas Walker Page, Josephine Pinckney, Amelia Rives Troubetzkoy, Irita Van Doren, John Hall Wheelock, John Calvin Metcalf, James Lane Allen, Bail Gildersleeve, Rudyard Kipling, Alfred Krymborg, Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Lizette Woodworth Reese, George Santayana, and Siegfried Sassoon.

MSS 6453-b Letters (photocopies) to James Southall Wilson and his wife Julia Gardiner Wilson. (Included are letters of Ellen Glasgow)

MSS 6453-c Phi Beta Kappa elections.

MSS 6453-d The papers of James Southall Wilson include photographs, letters and copies of architectural drawings and lectures. Of interest are a letter, 19 Sep 1962, from John Cook Wyllie to J. Albert Robbins stating that "Confessions of a victim" was not written by Edgar Allan Poe and a letter, 3 Dec 1962, to Arthur Kyle Davis from Christopher Short mentioning Short's novels "The big cat" and "Dark lantern." In a series of letters, 1929, Lewis Chase writes to Wilson re Thomas Holley Chivers. In a letter, 21 May 1920, A.G. Pollock writes to Wilson asking his support for the nomination of W. G. McAdoo at the Democratic Convention in San Francisco.

MSS 6453-e The collection contains a letter from Hervey Allen to Wilson, 1930 May 31, inviting him to a writers conference at Yaddo.The collection also contains four letters to Wilson and Stringfellow Barr from Thomas Wolfe, 1931 September 4, October 23, 1932 February 24, March 27, regarding Yaddo and the Southern writers conference held at the University of Virginia, and mentioning his writing, current activities, James Boyd and DuBose Heyward.

MSS 6453-f Papers of James Southall Wilson. The majority of the papers relate to the personal and profesional life of Wilson. Subjects include the literary work of Wilson, literature, life at the University of Virginia, "The Virginia Quarterly Review, " the Bread Loaf School of English, and various trips abroad. In addition to family members his correspondents include Edwin A. Alderman, Emily Clark Balch, Stringfellow Barr, Clifton Waller Barrett, Rexmond Cochrane, Colgate Darden, Walter Pritchard Eaton, Armistead C. Gordon, Julian Green, Atcheson Hench, Charlotte Kohler, H. L. Mencken, John C. Metcalf, Dumas Malone, John L. Newcomb, Allen Tate, and Carl Van Doren.

MSS 6453-g Papers of James Southall Wilson.The majority of the papers relate to the personal and profesional life of Wilson. Subjects include the literary work of Wilson, literature, life at the University of Virginia, "The Virginia Quarterly Review, " the Bread Loaf School of English, and various trips abroad. In addition to family members his correspondents include Edwin A. Alderman, Emily Clark Balch, Stringfellow Barr, Clifton Waller Barrett, Rexmond Cochrane, Colgate Darden, Walter Pritchard Eaton, Armistead C. Gordon, Julian Green, Atcheson Hench, Charlotte Kohler, H. L. Mencken, John C. Metcalf, Dumas Malone, John L. Newcomb, Allen Tate, and Carl Van Doren.The collection also contains letters written by the ancestors of Wilson's wife Julia Tyler Wilson, and of her father Lyon Gardiner Tyler, president of the College of William and Mary. This early correspondence includes letters written by Thomas W. Gilmer. Frances Bland Tucker, Henry St. George Tucker, St. George Tucker, and Julia Gardiner Tyler.

MSS 6453-h Guest book of Julia and James Wilson. The guest book contains quotations entered by several well known writers who visited the Wilsons including Carl Sandburg, Mary Sinton Leitch, DuBose Heyward, Robert Frost, and "A.E." (George William Russell).Among the additional authors, friends and family members who signed the book or left quotations are Margaret Emerson Bailey, Kate Langley Bosher, George Preston Coleman, W.E. Dold, Thomas FitzHugh, Lawrence Lee, Jean West Maury, Magruder Morgan Maury, Margaret Prescott Montague, Julester Shrady Post, Henry St. George Tucker, and Louise Collier Willcox.There are also bars of music by Alfred Swan and Francis H. Abbot, a sketch of Pavilion V, University of Virginia, by Fiske Kimball, and Marie Kimball's "mark."

MSS 6453-i Edgar Allan Poe research notes

MSS 6453-j Letter to James Southall Wilson from John Archer Wilson.

MSS 7838,-a Papers of James Southall Wilson relating to Edgar Allan Poe.Correspondence, 1922-61, with Poe students & scholars, Wilson's articles & addresses and papers prepared by his students, on Poe; incl. letters from Dayton Kohler, Thomas Ollivé Mabbott and Irita Bradford Van Doren. Also miscellaneous clippings, notes & memoranda regarding study of Poe. Correspondence, 1809-89, of Poe, John Henry Ingram, Sarah Helen Whitman, etc. [transcripts].

MSS 7838-b Papers related to Wilson's collection of Edgar Allan Poe.The collection contains three letters discussing articles about Poe; ten reprints of articles about Poe; three research notes about Poe; and three magazine copies of portraits of him, one a copy of the 1833 Rembrandt Peale portrait and two of daguerreotypes.

MSS 7838-c Papers pertaining to Edgar Allan Poe. The collection contains a letter from James A. Harrison to Harry Rogers Pratt concerning Harrison's "The life and letters of Edgar Allan Poe"; an annotated advertisement for John H. Ingram's "The works of Edgar Allan Poe"; a letter to the editor from C. Alphonso Smith re Poe's essay on "Barnaby Rudge"; and many notes on Poe bibliography.

MSS 2613-b Correspondence of James Southall Wilson.Material on University of Virginia participation in Universities Committee on Post War International Problems, 1943-1944.Virginia, University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Correspondence of James Southall Wilson, 1937-1944

MSS 2613-c Charge volume for the Bruce Library. Roll books of John Calvin Metcalf, 1 stenographic notebook.Virginia, University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Charge volume for the Bruce Library, 1939-1940, Accession #2613c, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.

MSS 2613-d Correspondence of Dean James Southall Wilson. Virginia, University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Correspondence of Dean James Southall Wilson

MSS 2613-e Manuscripts from its files (Graduate School, English Department) Including general correspondence, and that regarding the Department of English, fellowships, the Association of American Universities, the Conference of Deans of Southern Graduate Schools, and the Princeton and William and Mary curriculums. Also some of James Southall Wilson's correspondence with John Ward Ostram and Edmund S. Wilson regarding Edgar Allan Poe.

MSS 2613-f Correspondence and papers of Deans Frank Arthur Geldard, Lewis Machen Hammond and James Southall Wilson.

MSS 3500 University of Virginia materials of James Southall Wilson.Folders containing papers of the Research Committee, Post-war College Committee, Development Fund, and Honors work in Philosophy.

MSS 2951 James Branch Cabell letter to James Southall Wilson concerning a review of Let me lie by Dan S. Norton in the New York Times and regarding disposition of Cabell's papers and manuscripts. A copy of Norton's review is enclosed.

MSS 5060-n Ellen Glasgow letter to James Southall Wilson. Glasgow comments on her role in the publication of "On Ellen Glasgow" by Maverick Press. There is also one of Glasgow's Christmas cards which features a drawing her dogs Jeremy and Billy; the card is signed "Miss Ellen Glasgow" and dated 1928 but does not contain a message.

MSS 6882-a Harry Clemons letter to James Southall Wilson concerning Wilson taking position as librarian of the Univ. of Va., and finding a house in Charlottesville, Va.

MSS 38-135-j Laura Ingram letter to James Southall Wilson regarding the sale of John Henry Ingram's library and her fear that his copies of "The Southern Literary Messenger" and some portraits were lost at that time. She is sending Ingram's copies of the 1880 and 1884 editions of his work on Poe, and two letters of Valentine's.

MSS 12708, -a James Southall Wilson papers.The collection contains 11 letters and Christmas cards from James Southall Wilson to Thomas H. Foster together with two photographs of Wilson taken at Breadloaf in 1928 and two letters to Foster from Blair Rouse with a reply.

Wilson comments, sometimes with disapproval, on various subjects including summers at Breadloaf, the Virginia Quarterly Review, presidential elections of 1928 and 1932, Henry W. Anderson, Ellen Glasgow, Julia Peterkin, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, James Stephens, Stark Young, Willa Cather as a Virginian, and Joyce's "Ulysses" which he finds "tiresome." In addition, the collection contains the correspondence of James Southall Wilson and John Calvin Metcalf with contributors to "The enchanted years: a book of contemporary verse, dedicated by poets of Great Britain and America to the University of Virginia on the occasion of its one-hundredth anniversary." Correspondents include Margaret Emerson Bailey, Emily Tapscott Clark Balch, Maristan Chapman, John Vance Cheney, George Herbert Clarke, Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn, William Edward Dodd, Paul Green, Archibald Henderson, Dorothy Heyward, DuBose Heyward, Gerald White Johnson, Alfred Kreymborg, David Herbert Lawrence, Agnes Lee, William Ellery Leonard, Winifred M. Letts, Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Percy MacKaye, Edwin Markham, Angela Morgan, Grace Fallow Norton, Norreys Jephson O'Conor, Julia Mood Peterkin, Josephine Pinckney, John Crowe Ransom, Cale Young Rice, Edward Arlington Robinson, Marie Scherr, Clinton Scollard, James Still, Caroline Gordon Tate, Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy, and Irita Van Doren.

MSS 12708-b Miscellaneous papers of James Southall Wilson. The collection contains some miscellaneous correspondence on academic matters; draft copies, with answers, of English literature exams; two student papers "Women characters in Mallory's Morte D'Arthur" by M. H. Barnes and "Arthur Hugh Clough" by John T. Cheney; and an article in the Saturday Evening Post, 1967 December 16 that mentions Frank Geldard. Also present is a letter from James Southall Wilson to Arthur Kyle Davis, 1951 June 21, thanking Davis for the dinner and his part in compiling the "Studies in Honor of James Southall Wilson."

MSS 12708-c Papers regarding James Southall Wilson. 1950 July 18. Letter from Thomas E. Cotner, Specialist, American Republics Section, Division of International Educational Relations forwarding a copy of a letter received from Alfredo Sanchez Bella, Director of the Instituto de Cultura Hispanica. The letters are in reference to a proposed student exchange program between the University and the Instituto de Cultura Hispánica in Madrid, Spain.

1950 November. Letter to friends of Dean Wilson asking for their support of a volume of essays and studies contributed by his former doctoral students and members of the English department to be given to Wilson at the time of his future retirement in the spring of 1951.

1952 May 17. Letter from James Southall Wilson to Harry Clemons, discussing the 1919 offer of the remnant of John Henry Ingram's Poe collection to the University of Virginia by Laura Ingram, sister of Poe's biographer.

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• Scrapbooks