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President Roosevelt writes his son Kermit to discuss his views on the work of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. He also talks about a poem by Philip Roosevelt and a visit from cousin Emlen Roosevelt, Christine, Frank Lowell, and his wife. Roosevelt closes by saying he had dinner with Ambassador Jusserand and Justice Moody.
1908-02-23
President Roosevelt writes to his son Kermit to discuss his views on Charles Dickens and his work. Roosevelt also says that Ted visited and has decided to work with Jack Greenway.
1908-02-29
President Roosevelt writes to his son Kermit about the Peruvian telegram scandal. A telegram with Roosevelt’s name was written by Assistant Secretary of State Adee and included the phrase “me and my people.” Secretary of State Root did not catch it and the media deemed the phrase evidence of Roosevelt’s megalomaniac tendencies. Roosevelt decided no one was to sign his name but himself from now on. Roosevelt closes the letter with a passage from Charles Dickens that Henry Cabot Lodge gave him.
1908-03-04
Theodore Roosevelt is in need of a copy of the English translation of Chamberlain’s Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. His secretary suggests looking for it in London if they are not able to find a copy in the United States.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-05-10
Ambassador Reid delivers a speech on William Makepeace Thackeray and his special place of respect among the American people at the Titmarsh Club Dinner in London, recounting the kind recollections of men who knew Thackeray while he visited the United States. Reid acknowledges that Charles Dickens’s less flattering depictions of Americans in his own works have their merit, but restates that Thackeray’s writings on his time in America and his skill as a writer have left him as well loved by Americans as the English.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-12
A man, identified as the “Pirate Publisher,” stands at center with one foot on a large book labeled “Law.” He is wearing 17th century court dress, a large hat with four plumes labeled “American, French, German, [and] English,” and a long cape that appears to be made from the title pages of pirated works of literature; and he is carrying two moneybags. Authors from “America, Germany, France, [and] England” form a half-circle behind him, including “Mark Twain, C. D. Warner, G. W. Cable, E. C. Stedman, F. Brete Hart [i.e., Bret Harte], J. Hay, O. W. Holmes, F. R. Stockton, J. G. Whittier, T. B. Aldrich, W. D. Howells, J. R. Lowell, Heyse, Ebers, Scheffel, Zola, Sardou, A. Daudet, Jules Verne, Gilbert, Browning, Burnard, Hughes, Tennyson, [and] W. Collins.” Some hold papers labeled “James Payn, Louis Carroll, Thomas Hardy, [and] R. L. Stevenson.” They are accusing the man of illegally publishing their work without compensating them, while the man maintains that he has a legal right to publish their books. There is a jack-in-the-box labeled “The Hugh Conway Posthumous Producer.” The jack holds a knife in one hand and a gun in the other. Includes choruses “of British Authors…French Victims…German and other Sufferers, [and] Humble American Authors.”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1886-02-24
Theodore Roosevelt read and enjoyed Boy’s Town. He then comments on William Dean Howells’s speech on Rudyard Kipling.
1890-12-26