]> ms.29 Royce (Josiah) 1855-1916 Collection 1878-1916 Ms. 29 Ben Primer Special Collections, The Milton S. Eisenhower Library, The Johns Hopkins University
3400 N. Charles Street Baltimore, MD 21218 USA Phone: (410) 516-8323
Machine-readable finding aid encoded by Diwakar Bhandari Finding aid written in English Royce (Josiah) 1855-1916 Collection 1878-1916 Ms. 29 Special CollectionsThe Milton S. Eisenhower Library The Johns Hopkins University Contact Information Special Collections The Milton S. Eisenhower Library The Johns Hopkins University 3400 North Charles Street Baltimore, MD 21218 (410) 516-8323 Ben Primer July 1982 Diwakar Bhandari

©2003 The Johns Hopkins University

 Descriptive Summary Ms. 29 Royce (Josiah) 1855-1916 Collection July 1982 Royce, Josiah, 1855-1916 Johns Hopkins University. Special Collections 34 items English The Royce Collection spans the years from 1878 to 1916 and includes correspondence with members of the George B. Coale family (chiefly Mr. Coale, 1878 - 1887), his unpublished Hopkins dissertation, several manuscript compositions, photographs and lecture notes by a student in one of Royce's philosophy classes at Harvard. The correspondence with the Coale family, with whom Royce became intimate while at Hopkins, concerns family matters (congratulations and condolences) reactions to California, dicussions of current literature, philosophical musings and information related to the publication of The Religious Aspect of Philosophy which was dedicated to George B. Coale ( Coale's inscribed copy is in Special Collections) The Royce dissertation suggests his developing interest in philosophy, even though Hopkins had no formal training in the subject. His poem, "The Six Little Realists" suggest Royce's humor, and the lecture notes provide a clear picture of his style in the classroom. Related Collections - Other Royce letters are found in the following collections: Daniel Gilman (30 letters to Gilman and 1 each to Thomas Ball (registrar), to J.M. Cross and to Edward H. Griffin); Arthur O. Lovejoy (4); Ira Remsen (3); Johns Hopkins Collection (2 to David Dewey); Basil Gildersleeve (1). The bulk of these letters are printed and all cited in John Clendenning, ed., The Letters of Josiah Royce. Biographical material on Royce is available in the vertical file of the Ferdinand Hamburger Archives, Johns Hopkins University. Reminiscenes of Royce by Mary Coale Redwood and Katherine Royce are in the Accession File for the Royce Papers. The principal collection of Royce Papers is at Harvard University. Other institutions having Royce material include the Library of Congress and the University of California (Berkeley). Administrative Information Provenance

The manuscript copy of Royce's dissertation was the gift of his widow, Katherine, in 1923. Mary B. Coale Redwood donated the Royce letters to her family in 1937 - 1938. Manuscript and typescript materials by Royce were given by Julius Loewenberg through George Boas in 1956, and by Frank Oppenheim in 1969.

Use Restrictions

Permission to publish material from this collection must be requested in writing from the Manuscripts Librarian, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, The Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, Md. 21218.

 Preferred Citation

Josiah Royce Collection Ms. 29 Special Collections Milton S. Eisenhower Library The Johns Hopkins University

Biographical Note

Josiah Royce was born on November 20, 1855 in Grass Valley, California, the youngest child and only son of an itinerant father and schoolteacher mother who joined th flood of Forty-Niners to bustling mining towns. In 1866 the Royces moved to San Francisco where Josiah developed an interest in math that ultimately led to a B.A. at California (Berkeley) in 1875. Following a year of study at Gottingen and Leipzig, he joined the first goup of twenty Fellows at Johns Hopkins, receiving his PhD. in 1878. Upon his graduation Royce reluctantly returned to teach English at California, where he married Katherine (Kitty) Head in 1880.

In 1882 William James arranged for Royce to teach his courses at Harvard during his sabbatical, and Royce never left Harvard thereafter, becoming Professor of Philosophy in 1892. In 1885 he published The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, a statement of his post-Kantian idealism which emphasized some kind of metaphysical Absolute and reality as an act or experience of the mind. Other works followed including the popular Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892), The Conception of God (1897) and his most systematic statement delivered in the Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen, The World and the Individual (1900 - 1901). After Royce's interest shifted to more technical treatments of logic and more popular applications of Philosophy to concrete moral problems. Late in life Royce returned to the subject of his early work in lectures at Manchester College, Oxford, published as The Problem of Christianity (1913). In this work the Absolute assumes the form of the "Beloved Community" to which the individual man was bound by patriotic fervor, loyalty and self- sacrifice. Royce died in Boston on September 14, 1916.

There is no standard biography for Royce. Useful works include Vincent Buranelli, Josiah Royce (New York, 1964); Bruce Kuklick, Josiah Royce: An Intellectual Biography (Indianapolis, 1972); John Clendenning, ed. The Letters of Josiah Royce (Chicago, 1970); Frank M. Oppenheim, Royce's Voyage Down Under (Lexington, 1980) Both Clendenning and Oppenheim are working on major biographies.

Description of Series/Container List CORRESPONDENCE Series CORRESPONDENCE, 1878 - 1887, 1906 22 items, .5 inches

Principally letters from Royce to George B. Coale arranged chronologically. Also includes letters to Mrs. George B. (Caroline Dorsey) Coale and their daughter Mary Coale Redwood, and one letter fom Katherine Royce to Mrs. Coale enclosing a photo of her son Christopher

Box Folder Contents 1 1 Correspondence , 1878 - 1887, 1906 MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS Series MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS, 1878 - 1913 6 items, 2.5 inches

Includes manuscript copy of Royce's Johns Hopkins University dissertation drafts for articles, poetry, critical comments -- arranged by title

Box Folder Contents 1 2 Comments for Revision of Dissertation of Julius Loewenberg , 1911 1 3 Negation 1 3 Negation 1 4 Notes on Student's Opinions with Comments (c. 1913) 1 4 Of the Interdependence of the Principles of Knowledge (1878) see Box 2 1 5 The Recent Psychotherapeutic Movement in America 1909 1 6 Six Little Realists MISCELLANY Series MISCELLANY 5 items, .5 inches

Lecture notes by Harvard student in Royce's class, Philosophy 9, "The Logical Approach to Metaphysics: The World and the Individual" (Spring 1916) and photographs of Royce.

Box Folder Contents 1 7 Photographs 1 7 Philosophy 9 - lecture notes by Ralph W. Brown, 1916 (bound volume) 1 7 Of the Interdependence of the Principles of Knowledge (1878) - bound copy of dissertation in manuscript