Table of contents
- Finding the Nelson Brothers’ Archive of Miniature Books
- About the Project
- About Us and Contact Information
- Scholarship Drawing on the Nelson Brothers’ Archive of Miniature Books
Finding the Nelson Brothers’ Archive of Miniature Books
By Pamela Russell, Head of Education and Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programs, Mead Art Museum, Amherst College
On a Thursday evening in early 2013 at a small, southern New Hampshire auction house, I stumbled across a flimsy, old shoebox filled with tiny, carefully constructed, handwritten books, among the dozens of old dishes, tools, and knick-knacks arrayed for sale preview. For me, it was love at first sight. My husband and I occasionally attend these local, low-key auctions for sport and entertainment. Sometimes we bid on nothing; sometimes we are successful in our modest bids for intriguing curios. This night I had arrived late, just before the auction was to begin, having arranged to meet my husband there after work.
Time was so short I only had a chance to glance at the topmost two or three wee books, and I had no real idea what they were. But I wanted them, if only to be able to spend more time with them. The auction began, and by chance, the little books were offered within the first 15 minutes. They were casually described by the auctioneer as a box of children’s doodles. I wasn’t the only one who wanted them, however, and bidding continued for a few minutes. I persevered with some trepidation and, happily, came out with the winning bid.
That night at home I stayed up very late to look at them one by one – I counted more than 60 little volumes. A few bore the names of Arthur and Elmer Nelson, and soon, with internet help, I traced them to Goshen, New Hampshire in the 1890s. I spent more time reading them over the next few days and soon discovered that Prof. Karen Sánchez-Eppler was a leading scholar in the field of children’s bookmaking. In the spirit of serendipity that has surrounded this undertaking, I knew her, since I also worked at Amherst College. I was eager to bring them to her attention, which I soon did — and you are now exploring the marvelous result!
The Nelson brothers’ adventures hunting and camping, their seed farm and photography businesses, their invention of an imaginary world, and their book-writing and publishing ventures were all inherently collaborative activities. The brothers worked and played together. Inspired by their spirit, this project is itself an adventure in collaboration.
About the Project
A few of the Nelson brothers home-made books as Pam Russell first took them out of their box
After Pamela Russell acquired the box full of little books, now held in Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College, she showed them to Karen Sánchez-Eppler. Karen recognized that this unknown treasure would be a perfect subject for the Mellon Research Seminar “The Archives of Childhood” she had already agreed to teach. Five fabulous students enrolled in a course dedicated to studying and transcribing these manuscript books and to creating an online exhibition about them. The staff at the Amherst College Library and the Amherst College Office of Information Technology generously agreed to support this project with their time and expertise.
When Karen contacted the Goshen Historical Society, she learned that, perhaps not surprisingly, the record-keeping and archival passions of the Nelson family were a source of much of the material in the Society’s collection, and that active members of the Goshen Historical Society presently include one of Elmer Nelson’s granddaughters, Beatrice Jillette. The Goshen Historical Society generously hosted research visits and have allowed us to include in this site the Nelson family journals and other daily writing in their collection, as well as transcriptions they have made of Nelson papers that belong to the family. They have also given permission to scan and incorporate into this site their extraordinary collection of photographic glass plate negatives taken by Arthur and Elmer Nelson during the late 1890s and early 1900s. Other members of the Nelson family have been enthusiastic about this project as well. Rebecca Onion’s generous Slate article on the Nelsons and this online exhibit has done much to call attention to this archive prompting new insights and information from readers.
So there are many organizations and people to thank. We are very grateful for the support of the Amherst College Library, the Amherst College Office of Information Technology, the Goshen Historical Society, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Nelson family. Particular thanks go to Nora Bannon, Brian Nelson Burford, Jill Cashman, Bridget Dahill, Amy and Steve Eppler-Epstein, Miodrag Glumac, Beatrice Jillette, Michael Kelley, Lena Lamer, Mariah Leavitt, Murray McClellan, Dunstan McNutt, Janet and Sherman O’Brian, Scott Payne, Colin Sanborn, Kelcy Shepherd, Sasha Smith, Patricia Stephan, Sarah Walden, John and Mary Wirkkala, Nadia Waski, Julia Yermans, and of course Arthur, Elmer, and Walter Nelson, the best collaborators of all!
About Us
The “Archives of Childhood” class: Saul, Gillian, Nick, Kait, Pam, Karen, and Chris standing infront of the islands that formed the ground of the Nelson brother’s imaginary world
“The Worlds and Works of the Nelson Brothers” was constructed as a semester’s coursework at Amherst College during Spring 2014, and these bios date from that spring. The archival materials displayed in this exhibit come from the “Nelson Family Juvenilia Collection of Pamela Russell and Murray McClellan, ca. 1892-1895” in Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College’s Frost Library, and from the collections of the Goshen Historical Society.
Kait Feldmann graduated from Hampshire College, where she wrote her Division III (senior thesis) on playing and reality in children’s books. In addition to her lifelong passion for children’s literature, she is enamored with the stories and drawings that children produce, and fell in love with the Nelson brother manuscripts at first sight. Kait is now an editorial assistant at Scholastic.
Saul Grullon is (technically) a junior at Amherst College, majoring in English and Spanish—with a particular interest in marinating himself in creative writing. “The Worlds and Works of The Nelson Brothers” has justified his theory that creative writing is a powerful weapon and that anyone opposing should stop watching Star Wars and start reading the Nelson Brothers’ pieces. He is also working on his own creative writing in a thesis and will continue this project as a Mellon Research Fellow.
Gillian Lupinski is a Junior at Amherst majoring in Chemistry and Mathematics. Having been a bookworm from a young age and a Children’s Library Assistant during high school, Gillian jumped at the opportunity to explore the writings of the talented Nelson brothers. She has enjoyed both scrutinizing and writing about the texts as well assisting with the construction of the website (the title banner in particular).
Murray McClellan teaches Humanities at River Valley Community College in Claremont and Keene, NH. He is overjoyed to see how a serendipitous auction purchase has been mined for such insights into the creativity the Nelson brothers brought to their rural nineteenth-century New Hampshire.
Pamela Russell is Head of Education and Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programs at the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College. Her academic training as an classical archaeologist may be a factor in her love of discovering the unexpected and her fondness for antiques as well as antiquities. It has been a truly marvelous experience to see the small books of the Nelson brothers emerge from the obscurity of a mixed estate auction in rural New Hampshire to become the focus of deep study in an Amherst College seminar.
Karen Sánchez-Eppler is L. Stanton Williams 1941 Professor of English and American Studies at Amherst College and for the past decade her scholarship has focused on the history of childhood in the nineteenth-century United States. She has published widely in this field and served as a founding editor of The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth but she has never been involved in a project quite like this one and is delighted to have had the opportunity to teach this unusual course and build this website.
Christopher Tamasi is a Junior majoring in English, concentrating on poetry and children’s literature, at Amherst College. He plans to write his own children’s story for a senior thesis project, so studying the Nelson brothers is a wonderful and helpful experience. He will continue working on this project throughout the summer as a Mellon Student Research Fellow.
Contact Information
The Nelson Brothers Library of home-made books is kept in Archives and Special Collections at the Frost Library in Amherst College. The finding aid for the “Nelson Family Juvenilia Collection of Pamela Russell and Murray McClellan, ca. 1892-1895” is available at http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/amherst/ma249.html, the “Nelson Family Juvenilia Collection” can also be accessed through Amherst College Digital Collections. For information about working with the collection please contact the Frost Library at archives@amherst.edu.
Please direct your questions about the site or this project to Karen Sánchez-Eppler at kjsanchezepp@amherst.edu. We welcome any additional Nelson Family materials or any other information visitors to the site can provide.
Scholarship Drawing on the Nelson Brothers’ Archive of Miniature Books
Sánchez-Eppler, Karen. “A World of Books: The Transnational Imagination of Child Bookmakers” in Transnational Books for Children 1750-1900: Producers, Consumers, Encounters, edited by Charlotte Appel, Nina Christensen, Andrea Immel, Matthew O. Grenby, John Benjamins, 2023.
“Juvenile Journalism and Genocide: A manuscript magazine by three boys with commentary by Karen Sánchez-Eppler” Hidden Literacies, a podcast and website edited by Christopher Hager and Hilary Wyss, Trinity College 2023.
If you have produced scholarship reflecting on these materials please send citation information to Karen Sánchez-Eppler at kjsanchezepp@amherst.edu.
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