appendix-a

Harvard: English Composition

1931-32 English A-1 Section 6 Lyman Butterfield

5 October		Going on Eighteen On childhood reading and growing up	6 triple-spaced typed pages, letter size
	B	“This is very well handled. Who in the world is Timayenis?” (A Greek historian of classical Greece; Father read to me a translation of his work, earlier studied at Valparaiso.)
7 October		My Difficulties in Composition	1 handwritten page (done in class?)
	B	no comment
16 October		On Literary Culture, Which is Becoming Widespread	4 triple-spaced typed pages, letter size
	B	“This is well done. You have not made your idea in the last paragraph entirely clear—the applicability of the quotation is not apparent.”
23 October		Six Essayists of the Late Elizabethan Age	8 triple-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A-	“This is a mature and complete discussion. As a fine point be careful not to overwork figurative language—the first page or so is too exclusively gastronomical in its metaphors.
30 October		On The Saturday Evening Post	7 triple-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A-	“Thorough expository criticism. The figure at the end is not wholly effective.”
13 November		^* Benet’s “John Brown’s Body”—What It Means to Me	10 triple-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A	“This is very nearly perfect—the style is especially well-adapted to the subject: swift, figurative, forceful. “There is a certain ineptness in the title, but it is the only really inept thing in the paper.”
21 November		^* About a Girl Who is Worth Knowing for Other Reasons Than Her Being a Girl On my friend Camilla	3 triple-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A-	“A skilful short portrait”
25 November		Richard Cory	4 handwritten pages, letter size
	B	“Good story”
27 November		^*Samuel Johnson A character sketch. I noted it was “handed in late”	5 triple-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A-	“Some excellent passages there, especially the lacrimae rerum paragraph”
4 December		Looking Backward at Seventeen (Written Some Years Hence)	5 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A	“This is very nearly perfect. Do I detect the influence of Henry Adams in your approach? “The tragedy of human life (if I may offer an aphorism of my own to your galaxy) is that it is at once so necessary and so dangerous to differentiate between ‘facts’ and ‘illusions.’”
11 December		Henry Adams—An Anachronism	9 triple-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A	“A well-ordered and really searching account of a difficult figure. The actor-play image is virtually perfect throughout. “I confess that your detachment in discussing Adams surprises me.”
18 December		A Study in Materialism	7 triple-spaced typed pages, letter size
	B	“The story is good on the basis of its descriptive passages. The main theme is a little diffuse—the relevance of the climactic episode at first seems questionable.”
13 January		On Tom Jones	8-1/2 handwritten pages, letter size
	A	no comment
20 January		City Limits	23 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A	“This is an ‘American Tragedy’ in little. The story is effective on account of the wealth of realistic descriptive detail and the occasional objective observations on people and life, which are admirably restrained, yet powerfully ironic. Don’t break over this restraint and objectivity.”
17 February		Tea at Four	2-1/2 handwritten pages, letter size
	B	no comment
26 February		A Compromise with Thomas Hardy	8-1/2 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A-	“Good defense of Hardy’s use of coincidence—the conclusion you arrive at seems to me to be pretty close to the heart of the matter.
11 March		Man and Ideal on Joseph Conrad	6 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A-	“A remark you make (p. 6) is worth following up. Conrad’s restraint—issuing from the sense of the sacred mystery of human nature—is a quality which sets him apart from all the modern psychological writers. (illeg.) that he does not study Jim as a clinical case—with complexes, fixations, etc., though this is the fashionable way to treat such people.”
23 March		Metamorphosis On Arnold Bennett’s novels	7 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A-	“The ‘indivisibility’ of collective human life, which you discuss in the opening pages, is the best portion of this paper.”
1 April		“The Man of Property” On Galsworthy’s novel	5 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A-	“Your views pretty closely correspond with mine, especially your sympathies for Soames and slight annoyance with Bosinney. The analysis of these feelings is excellent.”
15 April		“Pulvis et Umbra” (Including something about Aldous Huxley)	6 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A	“A very spirited philosophico-literary excursus.”
29 April		Impressions of Tchekof	6-12/ double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A-	“Good ‘quots’ and especially good remarks on Tchekov’s characterization.”
30 April		On Ibsen/A criticism beset with difficulties	6 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A-1	“A very judicious estimate.”
6 May		Jeremiah/”Etiam perire ruinae.”	3 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	B	“Amusingly done—I am not sure you have capitalized on the satirical possibilities which Huxley’s novels offer.”
20 May		May Day and Bernard Shaw	9 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A-	“The discussion is sound if a bit too heavily analytical. The framework in which the discussion is enclosed is excellent.”
27 May		Criticism Aside A discussion of Eugene O’Neill, in particular “The Hairy Ape”	5 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A-	“You are obviously much taken with what might be called the experimental aspect of O’Neill—and this aspect lends itself to impressionistic treatment.”

Harvard: English Composition

1931-32 English 31 Bernard DeVoto

		Success and Romance by the Ream A defence of the “family magazines”	23 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
		“A good job. Train yourself to write shorter sentences.”
		The Younger Married Set	6 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
		A “sketch,” not quite a story “Pretty good. You’re learning from this sort of thing.
		Another Quiet Evening	7 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
		“Good movement & good dialogue, but rather thin. Rather more must depend on it than you give us here, before it can graduate from sketch to story.”
		“But Always to be Blessed” Still another	36 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
		“I’m glad you made this experiment, but I think you probably ought to try once more. The actual accomplishment of these 36 pages is not proportionate to their length. They could be cut down to 12 or 15 and profit considerably from the condensation. You have, in effect, four scenes and the last three just about recapitulate what has gone before. You reinforce your theme without developing it. In terms of action your story does not progress except in the opening pages & the last two or three.”
		Harvard Undergraduates: Do They Think?	12 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
		“A good study of well-bred mediocrity—charming futility. “The last 1/3 could stand expansion by specific instances. Too many generalizations are tossed at the reader. He would like to have some of them dwelt on, described in detail, & analyzed.”
		The New Boy	13 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
		“I thought this was going to be pretty awful, but it turned out to be pretty good. You handle the end well. The scenes with his mother not so well. I don’t find the dialogue convincing.”
		Sand and Water Presented as a first chapter of a novel, readily abandoned	30 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
		“This is not distinguished but, … ,fairly good. Its defects are too long, leisurely, loose, & unemphatic sentences, & far too detailed documentation. The last, if left within bounds, would be a value, since it means [word uncertain]. “You know these people & their milieu and, after I’ve read 30 pages, you’ve succeeded in making me accept them. I wonder whether anyone else would have read so far. They are essentially commonplace people & I suppose an argument can be made for keeping the presentation of them dull & pedestrian. But I question the argument. I see no need of your endless detail. After all, what have your 30 pages done? Told us that a high school math teacher who has a wife & son can’t get a summer school job & so is going to a farm he has. And the 30 pages are untouched by emotion. I don’t think it is significant. I think that it could have been done in 5 pages if you want us to understand his essentially pedestrian mind & habits. More likely, something significant is coming in Ch 2. All the material in Ch 1 could be given incidentally in a dozen sentences. “In other words—condense, speed up, leave out, emphasize. Give us the high light, the revelatory flash, & leave out the rest. Make it move, move, move, snort. “The dialogue is dull. They are perhaps ordinary people, but they must talk with nervous life. Listen for their speech, catch its accents. Make it move, too, and make it characterize & individualize while it moves. “Learn to describe in a phrase and learn that 99% of all description is unnecessary.”
		End of the First Movement	21-1/2 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
		“A precarious job, trying to make so long a time seem like a single episode, but you manage it pretty well. The weak spot is Howard, who is much too conventional a figure. With an eye purely for the story values, you should have individualized him a good deal more. Only a little planning would be required to develop & emphasize characteristics in him that would make him less the “menace” and more credible.”
		Flowers That Blush Unseen	24-1/2 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
		“An excellent analysis. I do not agree with your proposals—cheerfully because I’ve tried most of them. I’ve come to one principle & one only: try to get them to write about what they’re interested in, if anything. That is serviceable; the serviceability of anything else I’ve tried or heard of is at best doubtful. “But your pt of view is interesting and your perceptions are acute. If you have a carbon of this, mail it to me. I’d like to file it. “You do family relationships & pressures very well. “Better take Hillyer’s course next year & see what happens—how you develop.” “I’m giving you an A.

Harvard: English Composition

1934-35 English 5 Associate Professor Robert Hillyer

30 September		The Hallucinations of Henry Adams	2 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	B	“All too true, I fear.”
2 October		Washington Square On Henry James’ early novels	5 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	B	“A thoughtful and provocative criticism.”
6 October		Eliot on Original Sin	1 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	B	“A bit hasty, too large a question to be propounded so casually.”
13 October		We are identified	2 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	C	“What do you really want to say? For the present you had better make sheer lucidity your goal.”
16 October		Fascism for Beginners	12-1/2 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A	“A sound and thought-provoking essay. You must work toward an easier style.”
20 October		*Travels in Arabia Deserta On Doughty’s famous, difficult book.	3 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A	“Very good.”
27 October		A Short Pantoum An exercise in a late 19th century verse form.	less than 1 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	B	“Ingenious, but not quite polished to the point these romance forms require.”
30 October		Young Man to his Father	14 line of verse
	A	“Pretty good.. Point it up a little more for excellence.”
30 October & November 13		*A Young Man to his Father	14 lines of verse
	A	“A Great Improvement.”
3 November		The Beginning of a Day	1 double-spaced typed page, letter size
	C	“This does not quite succeed. It is artificial.”
10 November		*A Note on Jazz	1 double-spaced typed page, letter size
	A	“I am in hearty agreement with all this. And, except for breaks in coherence, which are your main fault, it is beautifully done.”
17 November		Outline for a Creed	1-1/2 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	B	“Excellent ideas, somewhat breathlessly expressed.”
24 November		Written after a Discussion of Mr. Conant’s Renaissance	8 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A	“This is well condensed. I agree with you utterly.”
27 November		Exercise in Dialogue	9-1/2 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	B	“A thoroughly clever philosophical dialogue, in which the philosophy, rather than the dialogue, is the important thing. It drags somewhat at the beginning. Your dénouement is good.”
8 & 15 December		Is There a New Scholasticism?	4 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A	“Excellent. See me concerning a Freud of the second century. Good ammunition.”
11 December		Exercise in Blank Verse	1-1/2 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A	“Good passages here, and fair verse throughout, but no general utility.”
9 February		Interlude: Piano, and Clarinet Another exercise in verse
	B	no comment
16 February		Grandpa’s Cousin Alice	1 double-spaced typed page, letter size
	B	“A pleasant unmasking, well condensed.”
26 February		A Well Meant Suggestion to Historians of Literature	7 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A	“As discussed” (in class?)
12 & 26 March		*Incident in the Life of Jim	17 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A	no comment
no date		Exercise in light satiric verse	2 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	B	“The trouble with this is in the verse itself. It is a good etching, but it needs a very neat form. I suggest the epigrammatic 4-stress couplet.”
no date		no title A short story, I guess you could call it.	17 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	B	“Your dialogue is fairly good (though I dislike too much phonetic indication of dialect). But there does not seem to be much point to this as narrative. It enlists the reader’s interest, but fails to hold it.”
no date		no title In effect, a discussion of college education.	3 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A	“This makes good reading”

Harvard: Undergraduate Term Papers

May, 1933		English 52 David Hume: his background and Influence	35-1/2 double-spaced typed pages, letter size, plus bibliography
	A	graded by Mr. Newton, the assistant. “Excellent/sound in conception, treatment, and presentation. I should like to have seen a little fuller treatment of Hume as historian, perhaps, but otherwise your paper is mature and painstaking.”
spring, 1934		English 50b A Report on/The Third Earl of Shaftesbury	20 double-spaced typed pages, letter size, plus bibliography
	no grade	Marginal comments only
spring 1934		English 78 A Report on/The Origins of the University of Oxford/and its History up to the Close of the Thirteenth Century	71 double-spaced typed pages, letter size, plus bibliography
	A	“Comprehensive, critical, thoughtful & readable—a good job!/EAW” (EAW was Associate Professor E.A. Whitney, who taught the course)
spring 1934		English 92 Henry James and the Illuminati	33 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	A	“I hope you go back to James again when the bulk of Hound & Horn looms smaller. Westcott’s essay may suggest a starting point, if not for an essay, for your own thought as to what will be James’ ultimate significance,” (graded and comment by Associate Professor F.O. Matthiessen, who taught the course)

Harvard: Tutorial Papers

27 October 1933	Impressions of Henry James	8 double-spaced typed pages, letter size

February 1934	Certain Damaged Ideas About Henry James	10 double-spaced typed pages, letter size

Early 1935	The Modern Fables of Henry James	35 double-spaced typed pages, letter size, plus 24 pages, mostly single spaced, of bibliography and notes
	“I have read this pretty carefully. My suggestions are sometimes in the text, sometimes marginal. All are insignificant; pay no attention if you disagree with them. “Let me hear from you. K.P.K.” (Kenneth P. Kempton)

Harvard: Papers for Graduate Courses

5 December 1935		English 160 A Paper on Nostromo: Suggestions	3 double-spaced typed pages, letter size
	no grade	no comment, by Professor Farmer, a visiting professor, red-brick English type coming (as I recall) from a French university.
1936-37		Comp Lit 40 A Suggestion about Montaigne	36 double-spaced typed pages, letter size, plus notes and bibliography
	A	graded by Asst. Prof. Theodore Spencer. “An interesting & intelligent job—the kind of thing I like, for it shows you are really trying to think things out. At times it seems arbitrary—(your selection of John of Salisbury) & at times I’m not sure I follow your meaning, but it’s an impressive piece. Future thought along these lines is probably one of your immediate preoccupations.”
June 1938		English 170b “New Light” on An American Tragedy	89 double-spaced typed pages, letter size, plus notes and bibliography
	no grade	no comment by Asst. Prof. Perry Miller.
Spring 1938		Philosophy 20n Seminar paper (title missing) on Friedrich Schlegel	41 double-spaced typed pages, letter size. The frequent long quots are single-spaced.
	A-	Professor A.O. Lovejoy, visiting from John Hopkins. “There is a good deal of thought in this paper, but the exposition of it is rather badly done. The logical relations (as you conceive them) between the three main themes, and also between a number of the subsidiary ones, are not sufficiently clearly shown; the threads are not pulled together into a well-defined pattern. The topics seem rather heterogeneous; and in the marshaling of your points and arguments there is more traveling and counter-marching than is necessary—a consequence, perhaps, of a lack of time to consider the problem of the most effective organization of the material you wished to present. —Since your principal topic was the “philosophy of Schlegel’s ‘second period,’ the treatment of ‘Witz’—an idea more conspicuous in the first—might have been more condensed; on the other hand, whether condensed or not it should have been based upon a full first-hand analysis of the relevant passages (chiefly Fragments) in Schlegel’s writing of that period. In the second part, pp. 12ff, which contains a number of interesting observations as well as well-chosen citations, it would have been well to try to make out what Schlegel meant by ‘life.” For want of this, you miss—or at any rate omit—some important aspects of that conception; and also some other ideas in the Lectures of 1827 interestingly related to some with which we have previously dealt— e.g., the animistic conception of Nature, the idea of progressive struggle upward in the organic world, the philosophy of history, the strain of anti- or supra-intellectualism and its conversion to the uses of orthodox (Catholic) apologetics, the otherworldliness— The English renderings of the German seem to me often excellent; but I have suggested a few emendations. A.O.L.”
20 December 1938		History 63 The Question of Anglo-American Copyright	67 double-spaced typed pages, letter size, plus notes
	B	Professor A.M. Schlesinger (or his assistant?) “You have presented the relevant material, but not in connected are orderly form. No outline. No formal bibliography. Most of your first 23 pages had little direct relevance to your subject proper.
June 1940		Gov 127b Classical Precedent and Recent Liberals in the United States (another seminar paper)	82 double-spaced typed pages, letter size, plus notes
	A-	Prof. B.J. Wright “A good part of pages 1-58 seem to be to combine longwindedness with a proclivity for playing by ear. In the final 25 pages the same characteristics appear from time to time. Your analyses are frequently superficial, even hedged about by generalizations which are hazy enough to pass for the profound. Why didn’t you say anything about F.D.R. or George Norris or others of the politicians who are frequently classified as liberals? It seems to me that you are overly fond of or impressed by the literary-philosophical-academic thinkers. “But it is an interesting pape, and a better one that then above comments would indicate.

Appendix B

English Composition (1928, 1931-33)

Fall 1928

Answer the question:

‘What Ideals of Life Do You find in “Les Misérables?”’ (As reprinted in the high school magazine, “The Helios,” p. 14.)

13 November 1931

Benet’s “John Brown’s Body”—What It Means to Me

(As submitted in English A-1)

21 November 1931

About a Girl Who is Worth Knowing for Other Reasons than her Being a Girl

(As submitted in English A-1)

27 November 1931

Samuel Johnson

(As submitted in English A-1)

4 December 1931

Looking Backward at Seventeen (Written Some Years Hence)

(As submitted in English A-1)

20 January

1932

City Limits

(As submitted in English A-1)

Spring

1933 (?)

The Younger Married Set

(As submitted in English 31)

Spring

1933 (?)

End of the First Movement

(As submitted in English 31)

16 October

1934

Fascism for Beginners

(As submitted in English 5)

20 October

1934

Travels in Arabia Deserta

(As submitted in English 5)

30 October (&

13 November)

1934

Young Man to his Father

(As submitted in English 5)

10 November

1934

A Note on Jazz

(As submitted in English 5)

12 & 25 March

1935

Incident in the Life of Jim

(As submitted in English 5)

Fall 1923	Vacation trips First installment (about 350 words) of an account of the previous summer’s family camping trip circling the Lower Peninsula (illustrated with a hand-drawn map), in The Zenith, my little magazine (from a scrapbook Mother kept). This copy is a carbon of the original typescript; our limited distribution was achieved with carbon copies.
Spring 1926	Forest Reverie Three stanzas of verses appearing in “Tadpoles,” the supplement to the high school magazine (The Helios) devoted to the 7th and 8th grades.
Spring 1926	A Day’s Experience in Cloverland A piece of some 800 words about an encounter with forest fire on a family trip of the previous summer, in the Northern Peninsula. In another issue of “Tadpoles.”
May 1928	What Scouts are Made of A piece of some 600 words on a day’s experience of a great uncle in the Civil War, in The Helios, pp. 14-15.
Fall 1928	What Ideals of Life Do You Find in Les Misérables?^{^[1]} Less than 500 words (specified limit) on this theme, submitted to a national contest for high school students announced in 1928 by Universal Pictures. As printed in Grand Rapids Press on 11 April 1929 and in The Helios, May 1929, p. 14.
November 1929	The Last Laugh/Who Got It? A “sketch” of some 1200 words about schoolboys, a dance, and football practice. In The Helios pp. 18-20.
February 1931	Don’t You Believe It Another “sketch,” about another dance and a triangle of very young adults. About 3,000 words. In The Helios, pp. 16-18, continued to pp. 32-35.