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Watson, James Sibley.
Berg Collection of English and American Literature
Restricted access; Berg Collection; Permit must be requested at the division indicated.
While the letters and documents in this collection range from 1920 to 1972, the bulk of the material was written between 1920 and 1929. It includes 6 manuscript boxes of incoming correspondence, predominantly Dial-related or addressed to Hildegarde Watson. The most common form of the remaining 24 boxes is carbon typescript. About a quarter of the collection consists of letters and papers of Marianne Moore. The collection also includes considerable work by Kenneth Burke in the form of letters and typescripts. In addition, one box holds letters from artist Gaston Lachaise and photographs of him and his work. Another contains the correspondence of Norman Charles to Hildegarde Watson, many regarding his efforts to assist her in getting her memoir of poets and artists published.
In 1919, Scofield Thayer (1890?-1982) and James Sibley Watson, Jr. (1894-1982) bought The Dial, an incarnation ofthe magazine founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller in 1840. An advocate of modernist writers, The Dial proved to be one of the most influential journals of the 20th century. Between 1920 and 1929, it published workby writers such as Gertrude Stein, Paul Valéry, Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust. Its famous November 1922 issue featured T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land;" William Butler Yeats' "The Player Queen;" drawings by Pablo Picasso; "Many Marriages" by Sherwood Anderson; and a "Paris Letter" by Ezra Pound. Scofield Thayer served as editor until 1925 when he left the magazine for health reasons. At that time, Marianne Moore (1887-1972), the 1924 recipient of The Dial Award, took over editorial control with J. S. Watson as publisher. Kenneth Burke (1897-1993) served as an editorial assistant at The Dial, and then as Music Critic from 1927-29.The magazine discontinued publication in 1929 due to financial reasons.
Among first to enter action. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.
One of 700,000 pictures in the NYPL Digital Gallery
