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Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech
Special Collections and University Archives, University Libraries (0434)Kira A. Dietz, Archivist
Permission to publish material from the Welford D. Taylor Collection on Sherwood Anderson must be obtained from Special Collections, Virginia Tech.
The collection is open for research.
Some issues of the Smyth County News have been digitized by the Smyth-Bland Regional Library.
Some items from this collection have been digitized and are available online .
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Welford D. Taylor Collection on Sherwood Anderson, Ms2015-020, Special Collections, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va.
Portions of the Welford D. Taylor Collection on Sherwood Anderson were purchased by Special Collections in 2015 and 2016. Additional portions of the collection were donated to Special Collections in 2015 and in 2016.
The processing, arrangement, and description of the Welford D. Taylor Collection on Sherwood Anderson began in October 2016 and was completed in November 2016.
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) was born in the small town of Camden, Ohio to Irwin McClain Anderson (d.1919) and Emma Jane Smith (d.1895). While Anderson excelled as a student, he quit school at the age of 14 to help support his family, taking on a wide variety of jobs. After his mother's death, he relocated to Chicago for the first time, working and taking a few night classes. He served briefly in Cuba during he Spanish-American War, but was sent there after combat had ended. A few months later, he returned to Clyde, then moved to Springfield, Ohio, in 1899, where he completed his senior year at Wittenburg Academy, a prep school. His graduation speech resulted in his being offered a job as an advertising solicitor and he moved to back to Chicago.
In 1903, work travels took him to Toledo, Ohio, where he met Cornelia Pratt Lane, his first wife. The couple married in 1904 and had three children: Robert Lane (1907-1951), John Sherwood (1908-1995) and Marion (Mimi) (1911-1996). In 1906, they relocated to Cleveland when Anderson became the president of the United Factories Company, a mail-order firm. The following year he departed the company, took his family to Elyria, Ohio, and started the Anderson Manufacturing Co., another mail order business.
In 1912, Anderson suffered a nervous breakdown. He returned to Chicago yet again and began work writing advertising copy and becoming part of the writer and artist scene of the city. In 1916, he divorced Cornelia Pratt and married Tennessee Mitchell, a sculptor. He also published his first novel, Windy McPherson's Son , the first of three books in a deal with publisher John Lane. It was beginning of his writing career. 1919 saw the publication of his short story collection, Winesburg, Ohio , one of his most well-know works. In 1924, he divorced Tennessee Mitchell and marred Elizabeth Prall. They lived in New York and New Orleans, and traveled in Europe, too. With profits from his novel 1925 Dark Laughter, Anderson bought Ripshin Farm, later just Ripshin, as a summer home, in 1926. He also acquired both local newspapers, the Smyth County News and the Marion Democrat . His son, Robert, helped with, and eventually took over management of the newspapers in 1929. Around the same time, Anderson began a tour of the south and its factory towns with Eleanor Copenhaver, which shaped several of his later non-fiction publications.
In 1932, Anderson divorced Elizabeth Prall and the following year, married Eleanor Copenhaver (1896-1985). Southwest Virginia was a powerful influence on his later stories and novels. His life in around Marion and Troutdale, Virginia, was the focus of his writing for the newspapers, as well. At the same time, he was still writing novels and short stories for magazines. In 1941, Sherwood and Eleanor Anderson left for a trip to South America. During the trip, after ingesting a toothpick, Anderson developed peritonitis and was hospitalized in Panama, where he passed away on March 8, 1941. He is buried in Round Hill Cemetery in Marion, Virginia.
Over his lifetime, Anderson published 8 novels, 4 collections of short stories, 2 collections of poetry, 1 collection of plays, and 12 works of non-fiction. Following his death, publishers and scholars have produced memoirs, critical editions, and several volumes of his collected letters. During his life, he was influential on the careers of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, and maintained extensive correspondence and friendships with authors, artists, publishers, and critics (though he later wrote that he had given up reading reviews).
Eleanor Gladys Copenhaver (1896-1985) was born on June 15, 1896 in Marion, Virginia, to Bascom Eugene and Laura Lu Scherer Copenhaver. Laura Lu's father founded Marion Female College, which was located next door to the family home, "Rosemont." Laura Lu attended Marion College and later taught English there. Her husband, B.E. Copenhaver, first taught at Marion and then became Smyth County superintendent of schools. Eleanor Copenhaver attended Marion College, then Westhampton College in Richmond, completing a B. A. in English in 1917. After spending a year teaching and time as a camp director, she spent more than ten years working for the YWCA, specializing first in rural community organizing and later in industrial communities. During this time, she met and eventually married Sherwood Anderson in 1933.
From 1937 to 1947 Copenhaver Anderson was head of the National YWCA's Industrial Program, later accepting a 2 year assignment abroad. In 1950, she spent a brief time apart from the YWCA, after it ended programs for employed women, but she was re-hired in 1951 for another ten years for the YWCA and United Community Defense Services, until she retired in 1961.
She spent her later life in both New York City and at "Rosemont" and "Ripshin" in Virginia. As the collection suggests, she maintained an active role in scholarship surrounded Sherwood Anderson. She died on September 12, 1985, in Marion, Virginia.
A lengthier biographical note can be found in finding aid for the Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson Papers in the Sophia Smith Collection. The UNC Chapel Hill "Documenting the American South" Collection also includes an oral history interview with Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson from November 5, 1974 .
Julius John (J. J.) Lankes was born in 1884 in Buffalo, NY. He began working as a draftsman in 1902, but spent the majority of his professional life known for his woodcuts. His career as an artist spanned decades, during which he created woodcuts and illustrations for authors, among others. In addition to Sherwood Anderson, he worked with Robert Frost and Beatrix Potter. Lankes wrote and illustrated A Woodcut Manual , published by Henry Holt in 1932. In 2006, The University of Tampa published a new edition of this book with selected letters and other writings, edited by Welford Dunaway Taylor. (A copy of the 2006 edition is housed in Special Collections. A copy of the 1932 edition is available at the University Libraries' Art & Architecture Library.) In addition to his illustrations and work as an artist, Lankes taught at Wells College from 1933 to about 1940. From 1943 to 1950, Lankes worked for the reproduction section of the National Advisory Council for Aeronautics (NACA, later NASA). He retired in 1951 and died in April 1960.
The Rauner Special Collections Library of Dartmouth University contains a collection of J. J. Lankes papers. A finding aid for the collection is available online.
Welford D. Taylor is a retired English professor and scholar. Over the course of his career, he published edited volumes of Sherwood Anderson's work and his own research on Anderson, as well as on J. J. Lankes and other authors and topics. Highlights of his books include:
This collection represents his research and accumulated materials pirmarily relating to Sherwood Anderson, J. J. Lankes, and Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson.
This collection contains several series of materials: correspondence to and from Sherwood Anderson, correspondence and research files about Sherwood Anderson, and a small group of photographs, audio, video, and graphic art materials. Materials generated by Anderson date from 1918-1940. Other materials date from about 1929-2006.
Series I: Correspondence to/from Sherwood Anderson, 1927-1940 includes correspondence to and from Anderson with a variety of colleagues and friends. It contains three subseries. Materials in each subseries in Series I are in chronological order. Undated materials are located at the end of each subseries.
Subseries A: Sherwood Anderson to J. J. Lankes, 1926-1940 consists of Anderson's letters to artist and friend, J. J. Lankes. The correspondence is a combination of personal conversations and professional. There are also several folders of materials that relate to the correspondence and the Anderson-Lankes collaboration: manuscripts and copies of essays, woodcuts, articles, and reviews. Subseries B: From Sherwood Anderson to various, A-Z, 1925-1940, n.d. contains letters by Anderson to a variety of individuals. In most cases, there is a single letter to each correspondent, with the exception of William and Carrie Wright. Wright built Ripshin, Anderson's home in Marion, Va. Subseries C: To Sherwood Anderson from various, A-Z, 1931, 1935 consists of a letter to Anderson from his publisher and an invitation.
Series II: Correspondence about Sherwood Anderson, 1929-2006, n.d. contains letters about Sherwood Anderson, including personal correspondence to Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson, artist J. J. Lankes, Anderson scholar Welford D. Taylor, and others. It contains four subseries. Materials in each subseries in Series II are in chronological order. Undated materials are located at the end of each subseries.
Subseries A: To/from Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson, 1941-1977, n.d., includes letters written to and from Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson, written after Anderson's death in 1941. It is primary correspondence between Eleanor and J. J. Lankes and W. D. Taylor. Subseries B: To/from J. J. Lankes, 1930-1957, n.d. consists of letters to and from Lankes from Anderson's son, Robert, from publishers working with Lankes and Anderson on Anderson's books, and other mutual acquaintances. Subseries C: To/from Welford D. Taylor from Various, A-Z, 1929-2006 includes correspondence from other Sherwood Anderson scholars and researchers. The last subseries, Subseries D: To/from various, A-Z, 1932, 1938, 1965, contains a few letters from individuals connected to Anderson (his children) or between individuals interested in Anderson.
Series III: Subject Files, 1918-2006, n.d. includes collected research files, ephemera, and other items related to scholarship about Sherwood Anderson. Materials in each subseries in Series III are in chronological order. Undated materials are located at the end of each subseries.
Subseries A: Writings by & about Sherwood Anderson, 1918-1953, n.d. contains a few drafts of writings by Anderson, along with photocopies of an article about Anderson and one of his newspaper columns from 1918. Subseries B: Sherwood Anderson & His Works, 1964-2006, n.d. includes files of research materials collected by W. D. Taylor on secondary sources or edited collections of Anderson's works. This includes The Buck Fever Papers , Certain Things Last: The Selected Short Stories of Sherwood Anderson , Sherwood Anderson , Sherwood Anderson: A Writer in America , and Southern Odyssey: Selected Writings by Sherwood Anderson . This subseries also has the transcript of an interview by Taylor with Joseph and Mary Cortina. Subseries C: Ephemera, 1924-2005, n.d. consist of pages from newspapers, programs from events related to Anderson scholarship, and materials from the Sherwood Anderson Foundation. Subseries D: Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson, 1980, 1985 contains obituaries following the death of Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson and a pamphlet relating to her mother.
Series IV: Images, Video, Audio, and Microfilm, 1970s-1991, n.d. contains all the multimedia materials received as part of this collection. Formats include photographs, postcards, a VHS tape, cassette tape and audio reels, and microfilm. Materials in each subseries in Series IV are in chronological order. Undated materials are located at the end of each subseries.
Subseries A: Photographs and Postcards, c.1970s, n.d. includes pictures of art works relating to Anderson, formal and candid images of Anderson, of Ripshin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripshin_Farm ), his home in Grayson County, Virginia, and of locations around Marion, Virginia, which were significant to Anderson's life and career. Subseries B: Video, 1991 includes the recording of a 1991 event on the Virginia Tech campus. Subseries C: Audio, 1976, 1982, n.d. includes a partial interview with an unknown friend of Sherwood Anderson and cassette tapes with interviews of Anderson scholars and Eleanor Anderson. Subseries D: Microfilm, 1925-1931, n.d. contains microfilm of Smyth County newspapers purchased and published by Anderson in the 1920s and 1930s.
Series V: Graphic Arts Materials, n.d. includes a small group of art works, primarily woodcuts. This series contains prints and photocopies of J. J. Lankes woodcuts, some of which were used in Anderson publications. It also includes bookplates for the libraries of Sherwood Anderson and Welford D. Taylor. Materials in Series V are organized by material type.
Books by and about Sherwood Anderson stored in Special Collections and the general collection of Newman Library are cataloged and can be located using the library's catalog . Microfilmed and bound theses and dissertations about Sherwood Anderson and his work that were collected by researcher Ray White are cataloged and can be located using the library's catalog . Special Collections houses multiple manuscripts relating to Anderson, including: Ms1971-002, Dayton M. Kohler Papers, 1889-1972. Finding aid available online .
Ms1973-002, Sherwood Anderson Collection, 1912-1938. Finding aid available online . Some items in this collection have been digitized and are available online .
Ms2011-004, Sherwood Anderson Photograph and Postcard, 1929, 1939. Finding aid available online . This collection has been digitized and is available online .
Ms2015-020, Welford D. Taylor Collection on Sherwood Anderson, 1918-2006, n.d. Finding aid available online . Some items from this collection have been digitized and are available online .
Ms2015-044, Sherwood Anderson Correspondence with Llewellyn Jones, 1916-1924, n.d. Finding aid available online . Digital images with transcripts available online.
Ms2017-001, Mary Sinton Leitch Correspondence with J. J. Lankes, 1932-1950. Finding aid available online . This collection has been digitized and is available online .
Ms2017-005, James T. Farrell Letters to Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson, 1952. Finding aid available online . This collection has been digitized and is available online .
The following books were purchased along with the manuscript materials and are cataloged for Special Collections Rare Book Collection:
The bulk of Sherwood Anderson's papers are housed at the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois. A finding aid for this collection is available online.
This audio reel contains no lead and starts in the middle of an interview with an unknown person about his memories and experiences with Sherwood Anderson. Following the interview, which is cut short, the audio is unplayable by equipment in Special Collections (it seems to have been recorded at a different speed) for many minutes. The middle of the reel includes recordings of someone playing piano. The end of the reel contains additional audio again apparently recorded at a different speed and unplayable.
Please note: Virginia Tech Special Collections does NOT house the original scrapbook from which these articles were filmed. It appears to be part of the Sherwood Anderson Papers held by the Newberry Library.