Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0252023285 ISBN 13: 9780252023286

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 1997

Synopsis

More than 600 letters and interviews providing information about Abraham Lincoln's pre-political
        and pre-legal careers are included in this volume, a priceless collection
        never before available in one place.
      Women to whom Lincoln proposed
        marriage, political allies and adversaries, judges and fellow attorneys,
        longtime comrades, erstwhile friends--all speak out here in words first
        gathered by William H. Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, between 1865 and
        1890. Historian David Herbert Donald has called Herndon's materials "the
        basic source for Abraham Lincoln's early years."
      Some of those Herndon questioned
        were illiterate; others could read but barely write. Completion of this
        undertaking took the editors to three major collections for the mammoth
        task of transcribing documents that often were nearly illegible.
      Invaluable to Lincoln scholars
        and intriguing to anyone curious about Lincoln and his times, the book
        includes an introduction, scholarly annotations, a registry of the informants,
        and a detailed topical index.
 

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Publication of this long-awaited volume makes available for the first time in complete and accessible form the most important source of information on Lincoln's early life. For twenty-five years after the president's death William Herndon, his law partner, conducted interviews with and solicited letters from dozens of persons who knew Lincoln personally. Up to now, the valuable information he collected has been available only in a microfilm edition in the Library of Congress, of such poor quality that it has been rarely used, particularly since there was no table of contents or adequate index, and in collections at the Huntington Library and the Illinois State Historical Library. The only previous publication of Herndon's materials, more than a half century ago, contains less than 10 percent of the collection and is so unreliable that scholars have hesitated to use it. Douglas Wilson and Rodney Davis have earned the gratitude and admiration of scholars by taking on the daunting task of collating the collections in the three libraries, painstakingly deciphering the all but illegible handwriting of Herndon and some of his informants, and carefully documenting the entire work.

About the Author:

Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis are co-directors of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College, in Galesburg, Illinois, editors of the Knox College Lincoln Studies Center Series, and the co-editors of The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The Lincoln Studies Center Edition and Herndon's Lincoln.

 

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0252023285
• ISBN 13: 9780252023286
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 864
• Editor: Wilson Douglas L, Davis Rodney O.