Charles Alphonso Smith Collection

Collection

Identifier: DC017

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The collection is organized in the following series: 1) Biographical information; 2) Correspondence; 3) Manuscript; 4) Notes; 5) Printed Material. The collection contains a very limited amount of biographical information. There is correspondence from 1894-1934, much of which discusses this Library of Southern Literature. There is also correspondence about his becoming the Roosevelt Professor, and a copy of a letter from President Roosevelt, There is a letter which is supposedly from the King of Prussia dated 1805, and a letter signed Amalie Beer dated 1811. There is an award-winning manuscript from 1884, and many notes for his publications. The printed material includes publications, information about his stay in Germany, and information about the Library of Southern Literature. There is also information about the writers O Henry, Mark Twain, Father Tabb, Leonard Charles van Noppen, Henry Rightor, Mary Rawlings, and Edgar Allen Poe.

Dates

Creation: 1894 - 1934

Biographical / Historical

Charles Alphonso Smith graduated from Davidson College in 1884. He earned an AM in English in 1887 and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1893. He was a professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1893-1902 and became a professor at the University of North Carolina in 1902. In 1910 he was accepted as a Roosevelt Professor in Berlin, where his lectures on literature were rumored to have pleased the Kaiser. He was an avid writer, and was responsible for the publication of the "Library of Southern Literature" as well as many books about authors such as Edgar Allen Poe and O Henry. His brother Henry Louis Smith, class of 1881, was president of Davidson College from 1901-1912.