reviews.indd


Book Reviews 

Herbert Putnam: A 1903 Trip to Europe. 
Ed. John D. Knowlton. Introduction 
by Ari Hoogenboom. Lanham, MD: 
Scarecrow, 2005. 115p. alk. paper, $25 
(ISBN 0810851725). LC 2005-11477. 

An initial reaction to this book based 
on Herbert Putnam’s (1861–1955) cor-
respondence during his July to October 
1903 European trip would be to wonder 
who would be interested in mere travel 
memoirs? Then, on further consideration 
and reflection, the year 1903 was, in many 
ways, a pivotal point in American history 
when Horatio Nelson Jackson became 
the first man to make a coast-to-coast 
automobile trip from San Francisco to 
New York and the Wright Brothers made 
their historic first flight at Kitt y Hawk. 
Furthermore, Herbert Putnam, a scion 
of the G. P. Putnam’s Sons publishing 
family, twice president of the American 
Library Association (1898 and 1904), li-
brarian of the Minneapolis Public Library 
(1887–1891) and the Boston Public Library 
(1895–1898), general director of ALA’s 
War Service (1917–1919), and eighth li-
brarian of Congress (1899–1939), was not 
your ordinary traveler. 

In this collection of the transcribed and 
edited manuscripts of Putnam’s travel let-
ters, John D. Knowlton, a retired archivist 
and librarian for the Library of Congress, 
reveals Putnam’s sense of humor, love of 
family as husband, father, and brother, 
and professional concern for keeping in 
touch with the Library of Congress even 
while on his European tour. Putnam’s 
letters are housed in two separate collec-
tions in the Manuscript Division of the 
Library of Congress. His letters, to his 
secretary Allen Boyd when absent from 
the Library of Congress during the period 
1899 to 1911, are located in the library’s 
archives, Putnam-MacLeish portion of 
the central fi le, and filed under Putnam’s 
correspondence. Putnam’s letters to 
his family are in the Herbert Putnam 

Papers, filed under his family 
correspondence. Putnam trav-
eled with an older brother, John 
Bishop Putnam (1847–1915), to 
England, Scotland, Holland, 
Germany, Norway, Sweden, and 
Russia. In addition to insights 
into Putnam’s private life, his 
letters represent, according to Knowlton, 
“a portrait of period travel—involving 
steamships, railroads, ferries, river craft, 
horse-drawn carts, rowboats, and hik-
ing—that would be nearly impossible to 
duplicate today.” 

The book includes an introductory 
essay by Ari Hoogenboom, Emeritus Pro-
fessor of History at Brooklyn College, City 
University of New York, which places 
Putnam’s travels in Europe in context with 
other “travelers [who] wished to widen 
their intellectual horizons and to experi-
ence natural wonders,” including such 
notables as scholars and men of letters 
George William Curtis and Charles Eliot 
Norton, artists Mary Cassatt and James 
Abbott McNeill Whistler, writers Stephen 
Crane, Edith Wharton, and Mark Twain, 
and composer Edward MacDowell, to 
name just a few. The text is meticulously 
edited and thoroughly documented and 
indexed. Nine black-and-white photos, 
the majority not previously published, 
illustrate the text. 

Putnam’s correspondence during his 
1903 Grand Tour of Europe fills in many 
gaps for library history enthusiasts 
fascinated by turn-of-the-twentieth-
century librarianship. By allowing a 
rare glimpse into Putnam’s personal life, 
these letters reward the reader with a 
word portrait showing the human side 
of the library superman. Academic and 
research libraries will find this book a 
valuable addition to their collections 
and a welcome addition for library his-
torians.—Plummer Alston Jones Jr., East 
Carolina University. 

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