links from charles olson's
a bibliography on america
for ed dorn

detail from a.k. lobeck, physiographic diagram of the united states, (madison: wisconsin geographical press, 1922), rep. in richard e. fuller, "the geomorphology and volcanic sequence of steens mountain in southeastern oregon," university of washington publications in geology 3.1 (1931): 1-150.

digital interface by jim cocola

assistant professor of
literature, film, and media

dept. of humanities and arts
worcester polytechnic institute

Overview

A Bibliography on America for Ed Dorn was first delivered by Charles Olson to Ed Dorn at Black Mountain College in 1955, after Dorn requested that Olson provide him with some suggestions for reading "about the West."

A Bibliography on America for Ed Dorn was later published by the Four Seasons Foundation in 1964, reprinted in Olson's Additional Prose, ed. George F. Butterick (Bolinas: Four Seasons, 1974), and then reprinted again in Olson's Collected Prose, ed. Donald Allen and Benjamin Friedlander (Berkeley: U of California P, 1997): 297-310.

As Allen and Friedlander note, "The Bibliography is much more an essay on methodology than a list of books. Nonetheless, in the course of his exposition Olson specifically cites ... texts" (435). This digital interface is not a reprinting of that essay, but rather a partial list of links to the authors and texts cited therein, with further links to additional archives and figures that Olson mentions or alludes to in passing.

Key Texts

• Brooks Adams, The New Empire (London: Macmillan, 1903)
• Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay: An Essay on History (London: Macmillan, 1910)
• Edgar Anderson, Plants, Man, and Life (Berkeley: U of California P, 1967)
• Victor Bérad, Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée, Volume I and Volume II (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1902-1903)
• Katherine Coman, Economic Beginnings of the Far West: How We Won the Land West of the Mississippi (London: Macmillan, 1912)
• Edwin Corle, Desert Country (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1941)
• Bernard DeVoto, The Year of Decision (New York: St. Martin's P, 2000; Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1942)
• Reginald Ruggles Gates, Human Ancestry from a Genetical Point of View (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1948)
• Harold Sterling Gladwin, Men Out of Asia (New York: Whittlesey House, 1947)
• Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1908)
• Jane Harrison, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1962)
• Herodotus, Histories, trans. George Rawlinson et al., 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1862)
• D.H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious (New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1921)
• D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003)
• A.K. Lobeck, Physiographic Diagram of the United States, (Madison: Wisconsin Geographical Press, 1922)
• Ferdinand Lundberg, America's 60 Families (New York: Vanguard P, 1937)
• Frederick Merk, History of the Westward Movement, (New York: Knopf, 1978)
• Gustavus Myers, History of the Great American Fortunes: Volume I: Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times; The Great Land Fortunes (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1910)
• Gustavus Myers, History of the Great American Fortunes: Volume II: Great Fortunes From Railroads (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1910)
• Gustavus Myers, History of the Great American Fortunes: Volume III: Great Fortunes From Railroads (Continued) (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1911)
• Francis Parkman, France and England in North America, Part 3: LaSalle and the Discovery of the Great West (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1897)
• Pausanias, Description of Greece, ed. and transl. J.G. Frazer, 6 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1913)
• Pausanias, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, trans. Margaret de G. Verrall (New York: Macmillan, 1890)
• Ezra Pound, Guide to Kulchur (New York: New Directions, 1970)
• Carl O. Sauer, "Road to Cibola," in Land and Life: A Selection from the Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer ed. John Leighly, (Berkeley: U of California P, 1963): 53-103 (1932)
• Carl O. Sauer, "Conditions of Pioneer Life in the Upper Illinois Valley," in Land and Life: A Selection from the Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer, ed. John Leighly (Berkeley: U of California P, 1963): 11-22 (1916)
• Carl O. Sauer, "Environment and Culture during the Last Deglaciation"," in Land and Life: A Selection from the Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer, ed. John Leighly (Berkeley: U of California P, 1963): 246-270, first in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 92.1 (March 8, 1948): 65-77. (1948)
• Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt, 1921)
• Stanley Vestal, Dodge City: Queen of Cowtowns: The Wickedest Little City in America (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1998; New York: Harper & Row, 1952)
• Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Frontier (Reno: U of Nevada P, 2003; 1933)
• Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1981; Boston: Ginn, 1931)
• Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, 2nd ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979)
• Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967)
• William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain (New York: New Directions, 1956)

Archival Sources

• Bureau of American Ethnology Reports and Bulletins
• California State Library, Sacramento, California
• Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts
• The National Archives, Washington, DC
• U.S. Senate Documents
  • Annals of Congress (1789-1824)
  • Register of Debates (1824-1837)
  • Congressional Globe (1833-1873)
  • Congressional Record (1873-2010)
  • THOMAS (1989-2010)

Key Figures

• The Adams Family
• William C. Boyd
• Charles Chaplin
• Meister Eckhart
• Sergei Eisenstein
• T.S. Eliot
• Leo Frobenius
• Henry Rider Haggard
• Homer
• James Joyce
• Carl Gustav Jung
• Herman Melville
• Pablo Picasso
• Edgar Allen Poe
• Marcel Proust
• Arthur Rimbaud
• Jonathan Sauer
• William Shakespeare
• Arnold Toynbee
• William E. Woodward
• The Bible
• The Donner Party
• The Rio Grande

last modified : jim cocola : 2010.10.12 14.00
[jcocola at wpi dot edu]