Manuscripts Contributes to University Press Books

Avril Madison, Manuscripts and University Archives

Five books recently published or forthcoming by the University of Washington Press have depended heavily on archival sources in the Manuscripts and University Archives section of the UW Libraries.

In Pilchuck: A Glass School published in 1996, Tina Oldknow chronicles the history of the school which began in 1971 when Dale Chihuly held a summer workshop at the Pilchuck Tree Farm near Stanwood. Oldknow used several collections in Manuscripts and University Archives to help construct this work, including the personal papers of Anne Gould Hauberg, Seattle arts patron and early supporter of Chihuly and of Pilchuck. Oldknow also consulted oral histories in the Archives of Northwest Art conducted by LaMar Harrington and others, which document the contributions of Pilchuck to the studio glass movement in the United States.

William Lang's biography, Confederacy of Ambition: William Winlock Miller and the Making of Washington Territory, published in 1997, details a different period of Northwest history, 1850 -1876. Washington's early territorial politics were dominated by ambitious and energetic men who capitalized on every economic opportunity. Through private ventures and various government appointments and elected offices, Miller accumulated one of the largest private fortunes in the territory. Lang sees Miller as typical of a breed of men who manipulated government and its resources to their own and the region's advantage. Many of Miller's personal papers are at Yale University. However, Lang credits the correspondence, documents, and financial records found in Miller's papers in Manuscripts and University Archives with providing key information to interpreting Miller's public and private life.

In the forthcoming Warren G. Magnuson and the Shaping of Twentieth Century America, Shelby Scates traces Senator Magnuson's impact on regional and national public policy. Scates documents a political career that spanned five decades and shaped domestic legislation and programs in a variety of areas including civil rights, consumer protection, education, environmental protection, health research, railroad reorganization, and power generation in the Pacific Northwest. In constructing this account, Scates and an assistant spent the better part of two years in Manuscripts and University Archives plumbing the voluminous Magnuson Papers.

Imprisoned Apart: The World War II Correspondence of an Issei Couple, to be published soon, features Iwao and Hanaye Matsushita who were living in Seattle at the beginning of World War II. Through their cards and letters, Louis Fiset recaptures in microcosm the wrenching effects of the incarceration of West Coast people of Japanese descent during the war. Iwao was arrested on the night of December 7, 1941, and sent to Fort Missoula, Montana, a Justice Department camp for enemy aliens. Hanaye, along with many Japanese-Americans from Seattle, was incarcerated in 1942 in Minidoka, the Idaho "relocation center." In this book, Fiset reveals the consequences of Executive Order 9066 on a human scale. Written in both Japanese and English, these letters are part of the Iwao Matsushita Papers. Mr. Matsushita worked as a subject specialist in the UW's East Asia Library from 1951-1979.

Galya Diment explores a life and a relationship in her forthcoming Pniniad: Vladimir Nabokov and Marc Szeftel, and uncovers the gentle protagonist of Nabokov's Pnin. Russian immigrants, Szeftel and Nabokov met while teaching at Cornell University. Szeftel later joined the UW faculty, teaching Russian history from 1961-1972. Diment, Associate Professor of Slavic languages at the UW, relied on letters in the Marc Szeftel Papers to illuminate her discussion.