a history of slavic studies

[E Wayles Browne]

Dear Hugh,
John Quincy Adams was ambassador from 1809 to 1814, so presumably the books arrived at Harvard in 1814 (or perhaps he sent them back earlier?). At that time, was there anyone at Harvard or in the United States who could read them?

I have studied the life of Talvj (Therese Albertine Luise von Jacob, 1797-1870). As far as I could see, when she married the American biblical scholar Edward Robinson and moved here from Germany in 1830, she became the first ever Slavist in America. But she didn't have a university position.

Russian language courses began to be taught at Harvard only much later, in the 1890s, by Leo Wiener.

Best,
Wayles
--
Wayles Browne, Prof. of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics
Morrill Hall 220, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853, U.S.A.

tel. 607-255-0712 (o), 607-273-3009 (h)
fax 607-255-2044 (write FOR W. BROWNE)
________________________________
e-mail ewb2 at cornell.edu


From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of Hugh Olmsted [hugh_olmsted at COMCAST.NET]
Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 2:19 AM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] a history of slavic studies

Dear colleagues:
On the heels of the Slavic-Studies citations I sent out a short time ago, I thought I might mention another addendum, a bit of a curio concerning a very long strung-out research project of my own, now stretching back almost 30 years.  It is still unpublished, but, I hope, not for too much longer.  It involved contributions of Russian books to the Harvard Library by the first U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Quincy Adams,  a donation initiated by a request from the University's president on the eve of Adams' departure for St. Petersburg.  A similar request at the same time by the lexicographer Noah Webster yielded some volumes for the latter as well.  All these books survive in the Harvard and Yale Libraries, respectively -- interestingly I discovered the larger part of the Harvard books just standing in the open Widener stacks, many with Adams' autograph; and promptly had them transferred to the Houghton Rare Book and Manuscript Library.....

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