Collections: E

Acclaimed writer, women’s rights advocate, journalist, and educator, Zelma (Zee) Inez Edgell was born in Belize City, Belize in 1940. Zee Edgell holds an undergraduate degree in journalism from Polytechnic-Regent Street (now the University of Westminster) and a Master’s in Liberal Studies from Kent State University. Edgell has published four novels and several short stories throughout her illustrious career. Her breakout novel, Beka Lamb, published in 1982, was the first book to be released in a newly independent Belize (formerly British Honduras) and would gain international notoriety going on to win the Fawcett Society Book Prize. Before becoming a celebrated novelist Edgell spent her early years working as a journalist, first for Jamaica’s The Daily Gleaner and then as founding editor of the Belize-based newspaper The Reporter. Edgell also served as director of the Belize Women’s Bureau, a position she held under two different administrations. As an educator, Edgell taught for many years at Belizes’ St. Catherine Academy, an all-girls catholic school she attended as a youth. She lectured at the University College of Belize as well. Edgell would spend the remainder of her teaching career as a tenured professor in the English department at Ohio’s Kent State University beginning in 1992. While at Kent State, Edgell taught courses in creative writing, fiction writing, and post-colonial literature. In 2009, Edgell received an honorary doctorate in literature from the University of West Indies. That same year she retired from teaching and moved with her husband to St. Louis to be closer to her children and grandchildren until she died in 2020.

The Zee Edgell Papers features not only a deeper look into the author’s professional life but her personal life as well. The collection includes personal letters, postcards, and notes between Edgell and her loved ones; professional correspondence between and her publisher; drafts of her short stories and book chapters; newspaper articles; letters from her global travels with husband Alvin Edgell during his tenure with CARE; documents related to her time serving as director of the Belize Women’s Bureau; and literature on Belizean history. There are also materials related to her time as a faculty member in Kent State’s English Department.

The scholar of book history Otto F. Ege disassembled works from his personal collection of medieval manuscripts to create forty portfolios of fifty leaves each, offering these sets for sale to individuals and institutions under the title “Fifty Original Leaves From Medieval Manuscripts.” Marketing his portfolios as a resource for study of the history of the book, book illustration, and paleography, Ege justified his biblioclastic enterprise as a means of sharing the beauties of Medieval books with a wider audience.

The majority of the texts scavenged for Otto Ege’s “Fifty Original Leaves From Medieval Manuscripts” (all but one in Latin) are liturgical in origin — Bibles, psalters, missals, breviaries, and Books of Hours — however Ege also included a few less common works such as the 15th-century manuscript of Livy’s History of Rome and a version of Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. The leaves range in date from the late twelfth to the early sixteenth century and represent a number of distinctive regional styles in paleography and illumination from throughout western Europe, including Italy, France, Germany, the Low Countries, Switzerland, and England. The UMass Amherst set is number six of 40.

A community arts organization founded by Susan Perlstein in 1979, Elders Share the Arts was a pioneer and national leader in the field of creative aging. Beginning as a single living-history theater workshop in the South Bronx, ESTA grew into a citywide organization with national impact that engaged older adults in participatory arts programing. The performing groups that emerged from ESTA typically drew upon the experiences of its members, with the programs running from storytelling and theater to writing, dance, and the visual arts. With the rapid growth of the field, ESTA ceased operations in June 2018, transferring their programs to other organizations.

The records of Elders Share the Arts offer vital documentation of the origins and development of the field of creative aging and the growth of one of the innovators. The collection includes a full set of board minutes, action plans, and by-laws, marketing materials, photographs and media, and a relatively complete record of grants sought and won. Of particular importance are files for ESTA’s senior programs and intergenerational programs, and a thick series of matierlas relating to the National Center for Creative Aging and the history of creative aging as a field.

Frederick C. Ellert, a professor of German at the University throughout the fifties and sixties, had deep local roots, was a leader in University Athletics, and was one of the most instrumental founders of the Massachusetts Review, where he served as the journal’s first editor from 1959-1961. Born in Holyoke, Mass. in 1906, Ellert attended the University as an undergraduate and made notable contributions to the football and basketball teams. Ellert would return to the University after his graduation in 1930 to coach the basketball team before studying in Heidelberg University and Columbia University and eventually earning his M.A. from Amherst College and Ph.D. from Stanford. Ellert was a very active translator of 19th Century German poetry and a passionate teacher, developing his own German textbook. Ellert died in 1983.

Representing his work as a translator and teacher, the Frederick C. Ellert Papers contain a number of his published and unpublished translations of Goethe, Heine, and Morgernstern, some including Ellert’s handwritten notes as well as typescript copies of his German textbooks.

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

During a long career as Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College, James Ellis wrote on the Victorian stage and the work of Gilbert and Sullivan. A founding member of the Valley Light Opera Company, he was also an actor and director of theatricals in the Pioneer Valley.

The Ellis Collection contains approximately 8,000 published works on the Anglo-American stage, 1750-1915, including individual plays and anthologies of English and American playwrights; biographical works on performers; works on the theatre in London, the provinces, and America; periodicals, playbills, prints, broadsides, and ephemera; and works that provide cultural context for interpreting the stage. Although the collection includes some works from the 18th century, it is deepest for the English stage in the period 1850-1900.

During the earliest days of the Civil War, publishers began to issue large numbers of “patriotic covers,” cheaply produced but often colorfully-illustrated envelopes commemorating the personalities and events of the war. The topics were highly varied, ranging military and political figures, significant battles and other events, nostalgia for home, slavery, and southern versus northern character.

Collected by James Ellis, the Patriotic Cover Collection contains over 250 envelopes published during the Civil War, primarily in the northern states. All envelopes are unused and in relatively pristine condition.

Ellsberg seated at his office desk ca. 1982

For the latest updates and information about this collection, visit our research page on Ellsberg.

Author, Activist, Veteran, Civil Servant, Whistleblower, Cold Warrior, Academic, Patriot. Daniel Ellsberg has spent the bulk of his 89+ years asking questions and seeking truth. From his beginnings in government service as a marine operations officer, where he first received top secret clearances and saw war plans for the Suez Crisis in 1956-57; to his time in the Pentagon where he was involved in high level decision-making around nuclear policy and the Vietnam War; and to his moral awakening in 1968-69 when he decided to begin copying the Pentagon Papers for public release; Daniel Ellsberg has utilized his whip-smart intellect to dissect and disseminate complex government policies for those seeking to understand and critique the moral failings of their leaders.

In his singular career, Ellsberg traced an arc from Cold Warrior to antiwar and antinuclear activist. Initially, he seemed primed for the soft chair of the academy. As an undergraduate at Harvard, he produced a brilliant thesis in economics on “Theories of Rational Choice Under Uncertainty,” which fed decades of further research—his own and others—on the questions of ambiguity and decision-making. A prestigious year as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Cambridge would ordinarily have led to the next logical step toward an academic coronation, a doctorate at Harvard, but with his educational deferment running out and conscription looming, Ellsberg applied to become an officer in the Marine Corps. By the time he resumed doctoral research (on game theory), he had acquired a personal understanding of the military from the perspective of a platoon leader that would in the years to come leaven his scholarship.

As he wrapped up his dissertation, Ellsberg accepted a position with the RAND Corporation, placing him in the cold heart of where Cold Warriors honed their thoughts. An analytical mind and keen insight into decision-making fit neatly into the demands of understanding the problems of command and control in nuclear war. At RAND, Ellsberg found himself drawn into assignments such as the formal review of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which he conducted as a consultant to the Pentagon. What he witnessed from the privileged perch of top-level clearance was unsettling: he saw a shocking and persistent gap between what the best intelligence indicated and what the political establishment said and did.

Vietnam emerged as a particular focal point for Ellsberg in 1964, establishing a powerful symmetrical concern with the nuclear threat that had been consuming his days. That summer, Ellsberg was attached to the Pentagon to assist in a strategic analysis to contribute to escalating the war, beginning his assignment ominously on the day of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Less than a year later, he traveled to Vietnam as a high-level official of the State Department to work under Maj. Gen. Edward Lansdale, tasked with reviewing “pacification” efforts in the provinces. This was no desk job, nor would he be a mere observer. For much of 1966, Ellsberg traveled the country, machine gun in hand, often engaging in forward combat operations with U.S. forces. By the time he returned to RAND, his experiences had led him to conclude that the war was simply not, as many had argued, a civil war in which the U.S. had intervened, but a war of foreign aggression—American aggression. Having been an official of both the Defense and State Departments for years and having had high-level, authorized access, he had a unique perspective on the backdrop of official dishonesty, of secrets and lies and pro-war manipulations on the part of the military and political establishment, and he began to find common cause with the antiwar movement.

The germ of what would become the Pentagon Papers was planted at a War Resisters League conference at Haverford College in 1969, when Ellsberg encountered a draft resister, Randy Kehler (whose papers are also ensconced in SCUA). Kehler’s deliberate, direct confrontation of the system and his unstinting, willing acceptance of the consequences were moving, and by October, Ellsberg lit upon the idea of copying the secret, and deeply revealing reports on the war that he was reviewing for RAND. He knew well that if discovered, his actions could result in decades behind bars. For several weeks, Ellsberg and his colleague Anthony Russo surreptitiously photocopied a trove of 47 volumes and thousands of individual pages of sensitive documents that clearly revealed the extent to which four presidents over two decades had concealed and misrepresented the war and its dim prospects in the hopes, in part, of gaining electoral advantage and out of fear for being seen as the man who lost the war.

Initially, Ellsberg sent copies of the Pentagon Papers to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and sympathetic members of Congress in the hope of creating a political momentum against the war from within the system. None spoke up. Only when the strategy of drawing congressional support failed did Ellsberg leak copies to the media—nineteen newspapers in all. To make a long (and frequently cinematized) story short, The New York Times struck first, publishing excerpts from the papers beginning on June 13, 1971, leading to the first four injunctions in American history constituting prior restraint against publication, and ultimately to prevailing in the Supreme Court over by the end of the month, voiding those injunctions. To make another long (and frequently cinematized) story short, Ellsberg set off a chain of events that played a catalytic role in the Watergate scandals and the undoing of President Richard Nixon.

In January 1973,  Ellsberg went on trial for his part in copying and distributing the Papers. Facing decades of prison time, he waged a resilient defense over the next four months and eventually won. Having survived the full force of the governmental onslaught, Ellsberg persisted. With the charges against him dismissed on the grounds of governmental misconduct, he returned to the front lines of opposition to tackle nuclear weapons, war, and governmental secrecy. He speaks, writes, and educates in the cause almost continuously, and he has taken part in protests and civil disobedience at sites such as the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, the Rocky Flats Nuclear Production Facility, and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories.

The scope of the Ellsberg collection is vast; from family mementoes and correspondence during his time in the Marines in the 1950s, to research material collected during the War on Terror in the early 2000s. The collection provides researchers with a trove of valuable material on U.S. Government decision-making and secrecy from the Cold War to War on Terror eras, as well as Ellsberg’s personal life. Ellsberg’s time at RAND is well represented with unclassified reports and studies as well as notes, correspondence, analysis, and clippings. His trip to Vietnam in 1966 is chronicled with notes, correspondence, photographs, reports, and a series of reel-to-reel tape recordings. There are a voluminous amount of legal files and material acquired through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from his Pentagon Papers trial in 1973, which also bleeds into material on Richard Nixon and the Watergate crisis. His post-government anti-nuclear efforts are represented with correspondence, subject files, clippings, notes, and drafts of his 2017 book, The Doomsday Machine.

Anchoring much of the material are Ellsberg’s period notes taken during meetings, briefings, phone calls, and writing sessions while he worked at RAND and the Pentagon. They provide firsthand evidence of statements made by various government officials in the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations as well as Ellsberg’s own observations and insights at the time.

The collection rounds out with clippings,  magazines, newspapers, audio recordings, and video/film documentaries about Ellsberg, personal correspondence with friends and family, and  material related to his advocacy on behalf of 21st century whistle blowers Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange.

Elysian Spring performing on stage, ca. 1969.

Formed by UMass Amherst students in the late 1960s, Elysian Spring proved to be a popular jazz band during their time on campus. The band’s name and member lineup changed over time, but by the time they recorded their first–and only–record in 1969, the band consisted of Rainer Bertrams, Jimmy Bridges, Lenny Ezbicki, Bruce Krasin, and Jerry Mirliani. The group was focused on improvisational, modal jazz compositions reflecting the beauty found in nature, with the band name itself referencing the Elysian Fields of Greek mythology. Elysian Spring played several venues on and off campus and were the highlight of the University Jazz Workshop concerts. The band released Glass Flowers in 1969, which features back cover notes written by Andy Haigh, Music Librarian at UMass at the time. After the album came out, and after graduations and moves, the band went their separate ways. However, their album became a cult favorite, being sought after by collectors and prompting a reissue of Glass Flowers that was released in 2018.

The Elysian Spring Collection includes the 2018 reissue of their 1969 album, Glass Flowers, color photographs, contact sheets, negatives, and a poster from a 1969 concert. There are also typed interviews with Bruce Krasin and Rainer Bertrams, and a DVD with a brief interview with Lenny Ezbicki and Bruce Krasin on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the release of their album.

After graduating from Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1924, George Edward “Red” Emery taught high school briefly and held a handful of other jobs before deciding to fulfill a childhood dream. Born in Marlboro, Mass., in 1904, Emery turned his love for the circus into a life touring the country as a white-face circus clown. After marrying Virginia Link, a Smith College student, in 1932, he settled down to a stable job in the Alumni Office at his alma mater, later filling in as Veterans Coordinator and as a staff member in the Student Placement Office until his retirement in 1972. Emery never left the circus behind entirely. Throughout his years in Amherst he continued to talk and write about the history of the circus and his personal experiences, and from the late 1940s through early 1960s, he used his show business connections to book talent for the Tri-County Fair. Longtime residents of Leverett, Mass., he and his wife died within a year of one another, Virginia in 1974 and George in 1975.

With his passion for the circus, George Emery’s papers contain material not only from his career as a circus clown in the 1920s but also from his later writings about the history of the circus, his work with the Tri-County Fair, and his long association with UMass Amherst. The collection includes correspondence with friends and family; circus toys and games; posters, photographs, and ephemera; and a library of books on circus history. Of special note are some exceptional photographs, a few posters, and a thick sheaf of material from the Tri-County Fair.

A 21 year-old farmer from Hardwick, Mass., Marcus A. Emmons enlisted in the 21st Massachusetts Infantry in August 1861, and saw active service in North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Having survived many of the great battles of the eastern theatre, Emmons was killed in action at Bethesda Church on June 2, 1864.

The letters and journals that comprise this collection document Emmons’ tragically brief experience in the Civil War. Both letters date from April 1864, while the 21st Massachusetts was stationed in Annapolis, Md., prior to the campaigns of that summer. One journal includes some miscellaneous pre-war accounts, a complete list of the Civil War volunteers from Hardwick and their regiments (some with notation of fate in service); a list of conscripts added to Co. K, 21st Mass., in 1863; a list of Civil War battles; military accounts; recruits added to the regiment in 1862, listing place of residence; and a roster of Co. K, 21st Mass. Infantry, with place of residence and fate in the service. The other journal begins as a spelling exercise book and includes diary entries for Mar.-Sept., 1862, discussing farm work.