Wednesday, April 7, 2010

U.B. Phillips, David M. Potter, and Southern history in the Stanford Library


In the process of reviewing titles in the library's American History collection, I've discovered a number of 19th century imprints which once belonged to Stanford historian David M. Potter, and which he had acquired from his Yale dissertation advisor, Ulrich B. Phillips.

A wonderful example of these association copies is Frances Butler Leigh's 1883 memoir, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation Since the War (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1883), which Phillips cited at length in his classic 1929 study Life and Labor in the Old South. Additionally, it was inscribed by the author(daughter of memoirist and actress Fanny Kemble), and member of a prominent plantation owning family of Georgia and South Carolina.

David Potter's papers are housed in the Department of Special Collections in Green Library.