a history of slavic studies

[Hugh Olmsted]

Hi, Wayles; nice to hear from you. 
Adams sent the books back earlier, in more than one shipment (and had actually contributed a number of books even earlier as well). But these specific dates are not crucial with respect to the point you raise about readership or use. The books remained most likely little read till considerably later. 
Talvj's story is indeed a worthy one, and deserves more study. 
The Leo Weiner story was of course as you note much later. It was actually also linked to the Harvard Library, as Archibald Cary Coolidge was building up international collections, including Slavic, and as part of the latter effort first hired Leo to catalog the incipient Slavic collection (a project resulting in the SLAV class in Widener). 
Hugh 

----- Original Message -----

From: "E Wayles Browne" <ewb2 at CORNELL.EDU> 
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU 
Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 9:37:41 AM 
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] a history of slavic studies 

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 It is still unpublished, but, I hope, not for too much longer.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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