The Lear/Carson Collection at the Linda Lear Center for Special Collections and Archives
In 1998, Linda Lear, a biographer and environmental historian, who is an alumna of Connecticut College, deposited the manuscripts she had collected in the course of researching and writing her award-winning biography, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (Holt, 1997), as a gift in perpetuity to the library's Special Collections. In 1999, Lear also deposited the manuscripts used for her anthology of Carson's writings , Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (Beacon, 1998). Other material, such as the Peace River Films archive, that supplements this collection has been added since then.
The Lear/Carson Collection consists of primary and secondary materials relating to the life, work and achievement of Rachel Carson. It includes primary and secondary materials given to Lear by Carson's associates, as well as an extensive clipping and newspaper collection of material on the pesticide controversy of the 1960s and 1970s.
The main categories of the Lear/Carson Collection are as follows:
1. Research files organized by chapter for Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature and Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson , and chapter typescripts for both books.
2. Rachel Carson's clipping files for the five year period she was working on Silent Spring and the period immediately after her death in 1964 maintained by her friend and colleague Shirley A. Briggs.
3. Original letters of Carson's friends and associates including the following correspondents: Shirley A. Briggs, Paul Brooks, Roland Clement, George Crile, Jr., MD., Jeanne V. Davis, Frank E. Egler, Dorothy Freeman, Harold Peters, Ruth Scott, Marjorie Spock, Mary Scott Skinker, and Stewart Udall. In addition there are copies of correspondence between Carson and others that are copied from the Rachel Carson Collection in the Beinecke Library at Yale University that Lear used.
4. Collateral typescripts include those of Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman (Beacon Press, 1995), edited by Martha Freeman; an unpublished biography of Carson by Angela Sober who bought and lived in the Carson Homestead from 1931 to 1972; the unpublished manuscript of Dorothy Thompson Seif which includes letters from Carson's college classmates and her mentor Professor Mary Scott Skinker; and the typescripts for several published and unpublished articles and encyclopedia entries on Carson by Lear.
5. Files relating to the activities of the District of Columbia Audubon Society (now the Audubon Naturalist Society), in which Carson was active, and a nearly complete print run of the "Wood Thrush" and "The Atlantic Naturalist" during the period Carson wrote and was active on the board. Included are articles by Howard Zahniser, Roger Tory Pederson, Irston Barnes, Clarence Cottam, Frank Egler, and Shirley Briggs.
6. A collection of the papers and correspondence of Connecticut ecologist and vegetation management scientist Frank E. Egler given by him to Lear describe his support of Carson during the pesticide controversy. This collection includes periodicals and reviews of Silent Spring which Egler collected for a review of reviews.
7. Papers of Connecticut ecologist, conservationist, and Connecticut College botany professor Richard Goodwin concerning the founding and early meetings of the Rachel Carson Trust for the Living Environment of which he was an original member.
Access Policy
The Lear/Carson Collection is currently open to researchers, who must make an appointment with the Curator, or 860-439-2654. Requests for permission to publish photographs from the collection must also be addressed to the Curator.
Lear's extensive interviews with principal figures are available as part of the research material in chapter folders. Her extensive audio tapes are closed for the foreseeable future.
Please note that all requests for permission to quote or to otherwise use Carson's words from any source must be secured from Ms. Frances Collin, Trustee of the Estate of Rachel Carson. She is the only person who can give permission. She can be contacted at P.O. Box 33, Wayne, PA. 19087-9998.
Related Resources
RachelCarson.org. This is the official name of the Rachel Carson web site.
Rachel Carson Homestead. Home of the Rachel Carson Homestead Association, located in the birthplace and childhood home of Rachel Carson in Springdale, Pennsylvania.
"Rachel Carson and the Awakening of Environmental Consciousness", an essay by Linda Lear on the National Humanities Center Home Page.
The Dorothy Freeman Collection at Bates College
The Rachel Carson Papers at Yale University
The Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives (University Archives) at The Johns Hopkins University
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Updated 8/11/06 |