Beschreibung
Together seven three-ring binder notebooks (binders worn, boards on vol. VI broken off) -- retained by us as out of "respect du fonds" -- containing approximately 876 typescript and manuscript pages. TOGETHER WITH: 29 file folders of articles, ideas, proposals, and miscellaneous publishing materials, consisting of approximate 300 typescript and manuscript pages, housed in a new Hollinger box. TOGETHER WITH: two of Lasker's passports (1921 and 1926) and a large b/w studio portrait photograph (undated). An important discovery. This is the private, largely unpublished literary archive of the noted social reformer Bruno Lasker (1880-1965), containing well over a thousand pages of typed and hand-written manuscripts. These writings date from 1923 until the year of his death in 1965. Lasker's social work is well known, and concerned racial prejudice and justice, trafficking and human rights, immigration and immigrants' rights, poverty in America and economic inequality. The present literary archive is hitherto UNKNOWN; without it, a full and balanced assessment of Bruno Lasker's life and work cannot be undertaken. That the materials herein are mostly unpublished is attested by Lasker's own statement in the first of seven folio notebook diaries named "Reflections." In addition to the "Reflections," the archive also contains working typescripts of 29 essays, speeches, and proposals, including 19 writings which were evidently destined for a collection (to be entitled "Rational Sympathy") that never appeared. It is instructive to present the transcription of Lasker's handwritten "To My Executors" in its entirety, which appears in the seventh and final volume of his "Reflections" diaries: "This is the seventh volume of what might be called a diary, though entries never were made with the frequency suggested by that term. It consists of original reflections, observations, and discussions, suggested either by experiences, by reading, or by verbal colloquies. Only a minute portion of this material therefore has ever entered into literary use [i.e. publication], and the bulk of it constitutes a continuous though not intentional progression of my major concerns, sentiments, and ideas over a large part of my life. Or rather, it constitutes a collection which represents my un-professional pre-occupations (sic). Those connected with my work are more likely to be embodied in memoranda, articles, prefaces, book reviews, reports, and lectures. These are for the most part either on record as printed documents or in the parallel series of binders, much larger in number (which has now reached vol. XXX), which I call my workbooks and which properly form an appendix to my recorded autobiography, made for the Oral History Project at Columbia University, and will be deposited with it in the archives of the Butler Library of that institution. [NOTE: the 30 volumes were indeed deposited at Columbia University -- Bruno Laster Papers 1923-1951]. "The present collection or diary, therefore, is unpublished literary raw material and on my decease may either be handed to some interested person to be mined for items worth preserving (perhaps even for the production -- such as I contemplate myself if I should find myself with enough time, energy and self-confidence for such a task -- of an unpretentious volume or two of short essays), or may also be appended to my MSS autobiography at Columbia University. Seattle, May 8, 1957. [signed] Bruno Lasker." Lasker "Reflections" diaries were written for an audience of just one person: himself. It is clear that again and again Lasker turned to the writings herein for inspiration as is attested by other materials in the present archive (SEE FINDING AID). As a social commentator, Laske was erudite and penetrating. He observes and elaborates on an unusually broad array of topics (SEE FINDING AID), and have found ourselves continuously impressed by his intelligence, imagination, introspection, and his command of the English lang. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 3080
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