The University of Chicago Library > The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center > Finding Aids > Guide to the Adair Welcker Papers 1885-1918
© 2007 University of Chicago Library
| Title: | Welcker, Adair. Papers |
|---|---|
| Dates: | 1885-1918 |
| Size: | 1 linear foot (2 boxes) |
| Repository: |
Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center |
| Abstract: | Adair Welcker (1858-1926), author. The Papers contain correspondence and self-published pamphlets and books sent to the University of Chicago Library by Welcker, prolific writer and frequent target of author and journalist Ambrose Bierce. |
No restrictions. Open for research.
When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Welcker, Adair. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library
Adair Welcker was the son of US and Confederate military officer, lawyer, public official and professor of mathematics, William Thomas Welcker, and Katy Adair. According to an autobiographical manuscript sent by Welcker to the University of Chicago Library "to be preserved by that institution as carefully as it would any papyrus from Egypt," the author was born in Troy, New York, in 1858, and educated in the east and in California. Welcker identified himself as a "lawyer, scientist and journalist" and is listed in the 1920 US census as a lawyer residing in Berkeley, California. He died in 1926.
Welcker was the author of many plays, poems and other texts. Although he was unable to find a commercial publisher for his works, Welcker printed his volumes at his own expense, and distributed them widely to universities, libraries and publications around the world. His persistence was rewarded with occasional short reviews in journals and newspapers, many expressing scorn, bemusement, or simple bewilderment, but all mined by Welcker for quotation in future works.
Welcker was a regular target of author Ambrose Bierce, appearing in The Devil's Dictionary, Black Beetles in Amber, and other works, as an exemplar of dubious literary merit and inflated self regard.
The Adair Welcker Papers contain correspondence, manuscripts, pamphlets and books sent to the University of Chicago by Welcker.
Welcker's works were self-published, often in multiple editions, and distributed by the author to libraries and publications around the world. All of the publications in this collection contain tipped in correspondence and/or manuscript additions and emendations. Book of Generation, Understanding and Louis XVI are hand-written texts, which, the author notes, were produced in multiple copies and distributed as widely as their printed counterparts.
The following related resources are located in the Department of Special Collections:
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/spcl/select.html
| Box 1 Folder 1-2 | Correspondence, undated |
| Box 1 Folder 3 | The After-Armageddon Prayer, Berkeley, 1916 (3 copies) |
| Box 1 Folder 4 | A Dream of Realms Beyond Us, 3rd separate American edition, San Francisco: Cubery and Company, Book and Job Printers, 1902 |
| Box 1 Folder 5 | A Dream of Realms Beyond Us, 4th separate American edition, San Francisco, 1903 |
| Box 1 Folder 6 | A Dream of Realms Beyond Us, 5th separate American edition, San Francisco, 1903 |
| Box 1 Folder 7 | A Dream of Realms Beyond Us, 8th separate American edition, San Francisco, 1903 |
| Box 1 Folder 8 | Book of Generation and Other Poems, manuscript, 190? |
| Box 1 Folder 9 | Flavia, Berkeley, 1885 |
| Box 1 Folder 10 | For People Who Laugh: Showing How, Through Woman, Came Laughter Into the World, 1904 |
| Box 1 Folder 11 | For People Who Laugh: Showing How, Through Woman, Came Laughter Into the World, 1904 |
| Box 1 Folder 12 | How a Dead Man was Drawn from his Tomb, and Back Again to Life, 1914 |
| Box 2 Folder 1 | Louis XVI, manuscript, 1893 |
| Box 2 Folder 2 | The One Kingdom to Come, 1918 |
| Box 2 Folder 3 | People (Thither coming out of a region wherein disasters are met as if they were a jest), Whom You May Meet at the Fair, Berkeley, 1913 |
| Box 2 Folder 4 | Romer, King of Norway and Other Dramas, Sacramento, 1885 |
| Box 2 Folder 5 | Understanding: For the Healing of the National that have, by their Politicians been made sick, manuscript, 1919 |