NOTE CARDS

The 2.1 cubic feet of documents comprising the papers of Walter E. Weyl date from 1894 to 1919, although a small quantity of family and other items included with the papers dates as early as 1862 and as late as 1956. The bulk of the collection actually falls within a nine year period, 1911 to 1919, and consists of diaries, note cards, clippings, correspondence relating to writings and notebooks.

Weyl used his diaries to record both intellectual and personal material: they include comments on diet and exercise, ideas for short stories, notes on dramaturgy and literary style and analyses of the author's financial investments. From 1911 until the middle of 1913, the diaries provide a detailed chronological record of his life, written in lined notebooks and often indexed by subject or theme.

Although the diaries from 1915 and 1917 record Weyl's wartime trips abroad, no other day-to-day diaries are included for the period between 1913 and 1918. In the latter year, apparently moved to rationalize his work habits, Weyl began to keep notes and records in a series of looseleaf notebooks. The seventeen notebooks in the collection, each marked with a number, letter or key word, include clippings from magazines, typewritten drafts of articles, ideas and sketches for articles or books and personal material, all arranged primarily by subject, not chronology. In addition, some of the notebooks include diary entries from 1918 and 1919.

Also in the Weyl papers, largely undated, are note cards, manuscripts of articles, both published and unpublished, and extensive notes on the philosophy and structure of a novel about the life of Christ, entitled "The Visionary," which Weyl worked on sporadically. Subjects treated in these miscellaneous writings include feminism, the class war, manifest destiny and the new Soviet government.

Weyl corresponded with many of the eminent politicians and political thinkers of his day. Letters from Theodore Roosevelt, Louis Brandeis, Walter Lippmann, Jane Addams, Lincoln Steffens and Robert La Follette are included in the collection, as are printed reviews of Weyl's major books and published comments on his articles. Missing are personal letters, material from the years preceding 1911 (with the exception of some certificates and a very few letters) and -as noted above -diaries for most of the period between 1913 and 1918.