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The papers of Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV, an American literature scholar, editor, and teacher, span the years 1963 to 2001, with the bulk dated from 1963 to 2001. The Fisher Papers consist of correspondence and printed materials that primarily document Fisher's and his Duke University advisors' educational and career trajectories. These materials also provide insight into various scholars' recent contributions to Poe studies, as well as information on the general activities of, and Fisher's leadership roles in, several of the professional organizations of which Fisher was a member. These organizations especially include those devoted to the study of Edgar Allan Poe.

The papers of the lawyer and educator William Righter Fisher and the journalist Mary Wager Fisher consist primarily of correspondence, but also include photographs (several of them tintypes and cartes-de-visite), financial papers, diaries, clippings, printed material, and writings and speeches. Among correspondents are many journalists, physicians, educators, and other notable figures of the late nineteenth century including Lucy Abbott, Mercy Baker, Jennie Chapin, Mary L. Booth, W.S. Burke, James Gowdy Clark, M.E. Dodge, Weston Flint, P. Girard, S. D. Harris, Albert Leffingwell, Henry C. Olney, W. Trickett, George Boyer Vashon, and Frank J. Webb. The collection also includes letters from James B. Hazelton of the First Regiment, New York Artillery. Hazelton's letters describe battles and political events of the Civil War, including Lincoln's re-election campaign and the anti-draft riots. The papers are particularly rich in documentation of women in medicine and women's medical education in the second half of the nineteenth century; the Freedmen's schools in the Reconstruction South; the movement for women's rights; and friendship among American women in the late Victorian era.