Collections

The collection, a part of the William A. Speck Collection of Goetheana, consists of correspondence, documents, playscripts, and other writings by or relating to Goethe and his work. The major strength of the manuscript collection is its documentation of Goethe's literary reception in England and America in the nineteenth century. There are 25 letters and manuscripts in Goethe's hand, and several Faust-related items. Authors represented prominently besides Goethe include Thomas Carlyle, Frank Claudy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Faust collector Georg Ehrhardt, Walther Wolfgang von Goethe, August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, University of Illinois professor Julius Goebel, Anna Jameson, Johann Caspar Lavater, Friederich von Müller, Henry Crabb Robinson, Friedrich Schiller, Carl Frederick Schreiber, Horatio Robinson Storer, Bayard Taylor, Marie (Hansen) Taylor, Karl August Ludwig Philipp Varnhagen von Ense, and Albert Wünsch.

The William A. Speck Collection of Goetheana: Medals and Medallions consists of 178 medals, coins, medallions, and reliefs depicting Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and other figures, mostly literary. By date, the pieces range from 1740 (a Gutenberg medal commemorating the tercentennial of the invention of printing) to 1934. The earliest Goethe items are a circa 1775 tin medal by Boltschauser and an 1808 medallion modeled by the painter Gerhard Kügelgen (1772-1820). Many medals and medallions date from anniversaries, especially from Goethe's centenary in 1849 and his subsequent birth and death anniversaries in 1899 and 1932. Several Schiller medals commemorate the centenary of his birth in 1859 and the hundredth anniversary of his death in 1905.

The collection, a part of the William A. Speck Collection of Goetheana, consists of manuscript scores, all either settings of texts by Goethe or compositions based on, or inspired by, his works. The music manuscripts include autographs by Liszt, Carl Loewe, Mendelssohn, Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Ludwig Spohr, and Karl Friedrich Zelter. The collection includes a one-page fragment from Beethoven's Egmont Overture, Op. 84, and an early sketch from Wagner's Faust Overture.

The William A. Speck Collection of Goetheana: Original Artwork is an artificial collection comprising original artwork that came to Yale from various sources, mostly during the Speck Collection's early decades. It includes some of the Collection's best-known holdings, including an anonymous silhouette made of Goethe in 1786 as well as original sketches and engravings by Goethe. Other artists represented include Wilhelm von Kaulbach, Georg Melchior Kraus, Johann Heinrich Lips, and Moritz Retzsch.

The William A. Speck Collection of Goetheana: Theater Ephemera consists of eighteenth- through twentieth-century theater playbills, programs, broadsides, posters, and other ephemera documenting performances of plays, operas, magic and puppet shows, burlesques and lectures based on works by Goethe (primarily Faust) and other German and European writers and composers.

Print collection of portraits, views, and illustrations focused on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The portraits are of persons associated with Goethe, and include an extensive file on Goethe. The views are of places where Goethe lived or visited, particularly Weimar, and the illustrations are of scenes and characters from Goethe's works.

Collection consists of correspondence, notes and drafts, card files, personal and family papers, documenting the founding of the Speck Collection and William A. Speck's activity as a Goethe collector and interpreter.

The papers consist of correspondence, volumes, albums, legal and financial papers, and photographs relating to the Tuttle family of Connecticut.

The papers largely reflect William A. Larned's post as Professor of Rhetoric and English literature (1839-1862) at Yale College. Included are lecture notes, notebooks with freshman prize compositions, grade books, and a student resolution requesting that his portrait be painted (1847). In the small amount of correspondence are five letters from Larned to his aunt, Mrs. John Mason. One is from Salisbury, North Carolina where he taught, and the remainder are from Yale College on his teaching and religious ideas.

Correspondence and financial records of William Barrett Pease, son of a New Haven bookseller and Civil War veteran. Most of the letters are from members of his wife's family and relate to Pease's real estate holdings in Brooklyn. A letter (1879 Jul 3) from Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the founder of the Hampton Institute, offers Pease a position at the Institute.