Volume IV of Memories covers the years from 1904 to 1914, when Lillian was between 39 and 48. This volume includes several amusing stories about the Taylors’ travels, as well as many other endearing vignettes. The theater also plays a major role in this volume, especially once the New Theatre opens only two blocks from […]

In Volume V of Memories Lillian writes about 1914 and 1915, until the journal ends unexpectedly. This final volume is filled with exciting accounts of Lillian’s seventeenth and final trip to Europe, which took place during the opening months of World War I. Lillian writes that it was “a trip of hardship, but of great […]

Volume III page by page This volume opens with a wonderful quote from O’Conor’s Facts about Bookworms: “A library of novels is quite safe; no true bookworm would deign to feed on a popular novel.” Lillian comments, “That, if true, is a relief, for my collection of American Fiction is safe. Bookworms love books, but […]

Volume IV page by page The fourth collecting journal contains several interesting comments on collecting, as well as a handful of entries that reveal Lillian’s excitement for obtaining and caring for her more rare books. One insightful comment comes as she assesses the divide between popular literature and literary merit that emerges through time. Writing […]

Volume V page by page This volume offers insights into both Lillian’s role as a collector and her investment in details of the text. In her entry for James Fenimore Cooper’s The Sea Lions, she tells this story of attending an auction: “I hate to buy books at auction. May 17. ’43. I enjoyed it. […]

Volume VI page by page Volume VI opens with the quote from Carl Van Doren’s 1926 The American Novel that discusses the divide between the popular antebellum writers and canonical authors such as Hawthorne. This quote also appears in the second Volume II of Lillian’s collection, which confirms that volume’s status as a leftover from […]

Volume VII page by page Volume VII includes many works of fiction covering the Civil War, and Lillian accompanies her entries with debates about the war in letters, reviews, and the books themselves. Among the most interesting is a long letter by the author Augusta J. Evans, explaining why she would not receive any visitors […]

Volume VIII page by page A comment in this volume of the collecting journals reveals Lillian’s awareness of the development of American literary history. In her entry for William Dean Howells’s A Chance Acquaintance, Lillian marks the shift from the Romance to realism with the following observation: “I have finished entering Hawthorne, and now I […]

Volume IX page by page Like Volume VI, Volume IX opens with a quote from Carl van Doren’s Cambridge History of American Literature, of which Lillian writes, “All the novels mentioned by Mr van Doren are in my collections. He was a wonderful guide.” The passage she quotes discusses “three of the five major American […]

Volume X page by page This volume of Lillian’s collecting journals reveals her connections to the literary sphere and contains several interesting letters that she copied into the journal. As it covers books written during Lillian’s late twenties and early thirties, the volume often includes comments such as this one on Thomas Nelson Page’s In […]