Lydia Maria Child was a prominent American abolitionist. The Lydia Maria Child letters consist of two letters written by Child, the first to artist William Tolman Carlton, and the second to a Miss. Howland. The first letter concerns Carlton's well-known painting "Waiting for the Hour," and references the writer and fellow abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier. The second letter replies to a query about the German writer Bettina Von Arnim.

Collection contains two letters written by Lydia Maria Child, the first to artist William Tolman Carlton, and the second to Miss. Howland. The first letter, dated September 15th, 1863, concerns Carlton's painting "Waiting for the Hour", which currently hangs at the White House. Child thanks Carlton for a photograph of the painting that had been delivered to her nephew, George L. Stearns. Child's friend, John Greenleaf Whittier, wanted the painting presented to fellow abolitionist Charles Sumner. The second letter is a reply to Miss Howland, who inquired if Child had ever seen correspondence from the German writer Bettina Von Arnim. Child replies in the negative.

Correspondence, diaries, notes, scrapbooks, clippings, and literary manuscripts of Hayne and his family. The papers illustrate Hayne's career and refer to Russell's Magazine (which Hayne edited), literary criticism, Southern writers, American literature, politics, including Reconstruction in South Carolina, and other subjects.

Includes Hayne's diaries (1864-1884), largely composed of comments on correspondence and notations of ideas and events, and manuscript copies of poems, many autographed, by Hayne's son, William Hamilton Hayne.

Major correspondents include Edward Bok, Jefferson Davis, Charles A. E. Gayarré, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sidney Lanier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Nelson Page, James Platt, Margaret Junkin Preston, Francis S. Saltus, William Gilmore Sims, Edmund C. Stedman, Alexander H. Stephens, Algernon C. Swinburne, Henry Timrod, Moses Colt Tyler, and John Greenleaf Whittier.

The addition (accession #2000-0273) (250 items; 2.2 linear feet, dated 1831-1886, contains transcriptions of selected letters, typed and annotated by Rayburn Moore as he edited A Man of Letters in the Nineteenth-century South (1982). Many of the original letters may be found in Duke University's David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

The Sarah Orne Jewett letters consist of two pieces of correspondence written by the author to an editor, Mr. Sawyer, and to Lucy Coffin. Sarah Orne Jewett was a well-known 19th century author whose fiction is set in her native rural Maine. In the first letter, Jewett declines to send Mr. Sawyer anything to print in the first issue of his magazine, as she has been ill and busy, and doesn't want to write something in a hurry, although she wishes him well with his new publication. The second is a condolence letter to Lucy Coffin of Newbury, Massachusetts on the loss of her father. The Coffins were a prominent Massachusetts family.

Collection consists of two autograph manuscript letters written by Sarah Orne Jewett. The first is addressed to a Mr. Sawyer, the editor of a new journal, declining to send him anything to print in his first issue, as she has been ill and doesn't wish to write something in a hurry. She sends him "hearty good wishes for the success of his magazine," asks him to send her a prospectus, and "suppose[s] that, like all editors, you have more verses than you wish to print." The letter is on a single sheet of folded paper with writing on three pages dated 1877 June 15 and written from South Berwick, [Maine]. The second letter is a sympathy note written on mourning stationery and addressed to Miss [Lucy] Coffin dated 26 December, but lacking a year. A Boston address appears at the top. Jewett expresses sympathy for the loss of Miss Coffin's father from both her and her companion Mrs. Field, and reminisces about a day they had spent together in Newburyport. Jewett references John Greenleaf Whittier, who was a student of Lucy's cousin Joseph while at Dartmouth College. The Coffin Family was prominent in New England and lived in Newbury, Massachusetts for many generations.