Seymour Adelman Letters and Documents Collection

Seymour Adelman was an enthusiastic collector with wide-ranging interests. His incredibly generous donations to the Library brought us important collections of A.E. Housman, Laurence Housman, Ralph Hodgson, Claud Lovat Fraser, and Thomas and Susan Eakins documents and ephemera, as well as a striking collection of boxiana. The Letters and Documents Collection represents additional interests, spanning the late 18th to the mid-20th centuries. The major components of this collections are 19th and 20th-century literary and artistic figures and documents relating to local history.

The literary and artistic figures whose correspondence Adelman chose to collect range from the world-famous to the obscure. Many letters and miscellaneous documents relate to the poet John Keats and others in his circle, such as Percy Bysshe Shelley and the painter Joseph Severn. Other poets and authors Adelman collected extensively include Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, James Flecker, James Stephens, Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, Thomas Hardy, Francis Thompson, Haldane Macfall, Holbrook Jackson, and John Lemprière. Artists who figure prominently in the collection include Benjamin Robert Haydon, Sir William Rothenstein, and Sir Edward Poynter. In addition, Adelman amassed a collection of the correspondence of art critic Sadakichi Hartmann and prominent editors Leigh Hunt (The Examiner), Wilfrid Meynell (Merry England), J.M. Stoddard (Lippincott's), and John Scott (London Magazine).

Many items in the collection relate to Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia area, and local Friends. There are many documents to and from the Bettles, prominent Philadelphia Quakers whose sons attended Haverford College. Some are family letters, but other correspondents include bookseller Charles Coffin, Ministers Jesse Kersey, Elizabeth Robson, and Joseph John Gurney, and abolitionist Sarah Moore Grimke. The collections also includes documents from the Philadelphia Monthly and Yearly Meetings of Friends. Additional material includes letters and documents relating to Samuel Coates and the Pennsylvania Hospital just before 1800, documents printed by Benjamin Franklin's business, and deeds for land in and around Philadelphia.

Also contained in the Adelman Collection, but not falling under any larger category, are individual cards, letters, and documents, as well as manuscripts, autographs, and other small ephemera. There are letters from Winston Churchill - and additionally photographs and other memorabilia of Churchill. There are letters from Benjamin Disraeli, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Albert Einstein. A collection of over forty letters from Colonel Jonathan LaFausille and his wife to her sister were written from various British camps during the Seven Years War. Many other letters from prominent - and ordinary - Americans and Britons are contained in the collection, covering topics from society gossip to ornithology.