Scope and Content Note
The papers of Waldo Peirce (1884-1970) span the years 1889-1977 and consist of a diary, correspondence, writings, legal and financial papers, photographs, and miscellaneous personal items. The collection is organized into six series: Diary , Family Correspondence , General Correspondence , Miscellany , Formerly Restricted Family Correspondence , and Addition .
Much of the Family Correspondence and Formerly Restricted Family Correspondence is between Waldo Peirce and his mother, Anna Hayford Peirce, 1892-1928. Often illustrated with pen and ink drawings, the son’s letters trace Peirce's artistic career in vivid detail. Her letters describe life in Bangor, Maine, and the various countries that she visited. Also in the Family Correspondence are letters of Waldo’s brother, Hayford Peirce, an authority on Byzantine art and author of publications on late Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic archaeology.
Prominent correspondents in the General Correspondence include fellow artists such as George Biddle, Douglas W. Gorsline, Marsden Hartley, Doris Lee, Henry Varnum Poor, Homer Saint-Gaudens, Millard Sheets, Frederic Taubes, Hendrik Willem Van Loon, Art Young, Dahlov, Zorach Ipcar, and William Zorach. Also prominent are letters from Ernest Hemingway (whom Peirce met in France during World War I and accompanied on several trips to Spain), Earnest Albert Hooton, Samuel Eliot Morison, and Maxwell E. Perkins. Of particular interest are letters he received from his close friend Lincoln Colcord, a literary critic and author of sea stories, for the period 1923-1944.
Included in the Miscellany are an incomplete draft of an autobiography, bills and receipts, drawings made by Peirce’s children and grandchildren, a holograph collection of his Rabelaisian poetry, and school papers from when he was a student at Harvard. Many of the latter are embellished with Peirce's pen and ink drawings, and some are further enhanced by the often acerbic comments of Charles Townsend Copeland.
Formerly Restricted Family Correspondence consists of letters received that were made available to readers without requiring special permission beginning in 1998. The Addition supplements previously processed series of family material, general correspondence, and miscellany.