Three soft cover books by James D. Hart about Herman Melvile who wrote MOBY DICK and Richard Henry Dana who wrote
TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST. All three booklets are enclosed in a non contemporary slip box

Melville and Dana  and  The Education of Richard HenryDana, Jr  and The Other Writings of Richard Henry Dana

Melville and Dana is signed and inscribed by James D. Hart to the eminent Professor Lyman

The Other Writings of Richard Henry Dana, Jr. was limited to a mere 30 copies, so stated, for Professor Hart's personal distribution.
This is the only listing like this for sale and from my personal collection. These three are enclosed in a slip box as shown, done decades ago.

Melville and Dana is eight pages, stapled wraps and was reprinted from American Literature Volume , No 1. March 1927. It is inscribed to the eminent 
Dr. Lyman from the author in fountain pen. Very good.

The Education of Richard Henry Dāna, Jr  Softcover, in stapled green cover paper in wraps. 25 papers. This is a reprint that Dr. Hart wrote for a publication that
appeared in 1936. This book is has some very interesting information in it. Very good.

The Other Writings of Richard Henry Dana  ca. 1935. Softcover  in stapled green cover paper, large 8vo. Limited to only thirty copies. 12 pages with limitation 
statement on the rear cover. This is a very scholarly piece written by a true authority on Richard Dana. Very good.

If you collect either of these authors, you really should include these items. Below I have some information about Dr. James Hart.  

James David Hart was a very prominent American literary scholar and professor at University of California in Berkeley for fifty-four years. He is most noted for writing The Oxford Companion to American Literature and A Companion to California. He was born on April 18, 1911 in San Francisco and passed away in Berkeley on July 23, 1990. He studied at Stamford University, Mills College and Harvard University. His fields special interest were American literature and English Literature

Professor Hart was best known as the author of the "Oxford Companion to American Literature," which he conceived in 1934 and which is now in its fifth edition. For the past 21 years he was also director of the Bancroft Library at Berkeley, regarded as the richest treasury of history of the American West.

The critic Alfred Kazin said yesterday that the Oxford Companion had been on his desk for nearly half a century and that it was ''the most valuable handbook I know on our literature.'' In its current edition, it is an 896-page compendium of biographical, historical and literary information on American authors and their works, from Thomas Jefferson to J. D. Salinger, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Woody Allen.

Unlike most such books, which are written by teams of scholars, the Oxford Companion was the work of Professor Hart alone. One day in 1934, while studying for his doctorate at Harvard University, he was in Manhattan browsing among the secondhand bookstores clustered on Fourth Avenue below 14th Street

Afterward, passing the office of the Oxford University Press on Fifth Avenue, he went in on an impulse and told a receptionist that he had an idea for a book. When Margaret Nicholson, an editor, came out to see him, he asked her why there was no American counterpart to the Oxford Companion to British Literature.

''We've been looking for someone to do that,'' she replied, and took him in to see Sir Geoffrey Cumberledge, director of the press. Sir Geoffrey asked to see samples of the young man's work, saying he was sailing for Europe the next day on the Queen Mary.

The would-be author had none, so he went to his hotel room and worked through the night turning out essays on Emerson, Richard Henry Dana and other literary figures, which he delivered in the morning. A few months later he had a contract.

'A Companion to California'

Professor Hart, a native of San Francisco, received a bachelor's degree from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from Harvard. At Berkeley he served as chairman of the English department and was the university's vice chancellor from 1957 to 1960. In 1969 he was appointed director of the Bancroft Library, a post that is now endowed in his name.

In addition to the Oxford Companion, he was the author of ''A Companion to California,'' also published by Oxford, and works on Robert Louis Stevenson, Frank Norris, Western history, popular writing and fine printing.

Professor Hart was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Antiquarian Society. From 1970 to 1986 he was a trustee of Mills College, serving as president of the board for three years. In 1963 he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.





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