Scope and Content Note
The papers of George Kennan (1845-1924) span the years 1840-1937 and consists of correspondence, family letters, notes and notebooks, articles, diaries, journals, clippings, lecture material, printed matter, memorabilia, autobiographical and biographical material, photographs, and maps. The collection is particularly detailed for Czarist Russia and Siberia, where Kennan made extensive explorations and prepared studies on social conditions, the prisons, and the exile system. Other materials deal with travels and events in Japan, Korea, Cuba, the Caucasus, Arctic regions, and Martinique (where Kennan reported the Mont Pelée eruption of 1902). Included are studies of the flowers of Nova Scotia, papers concerning the Alexander Graham Bell family, and correspondence of Kennan's wife, Emeline Rathbone Weld Kennan. Among the correspondents in the papers are Ekaterina Konstantinovna Breshko-Breshkovskai︠a︡, Robert Lansing, Walter Hines Page, Theodore Roosevelt, S. Stepniak, F. Volkhovskīĭ, and Stephen Wise.
The collection is organized into eight series: Correspondence; Diaries, Journals, and Notebooks; Notes File; Lecture Materials and Articles; Newspaper Clippings; Printed Matter; Miscellany; and Addition.