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Claude Bissell fonds
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Personal

This series spans the whole of Claude Bissell’s adult life as well as some documents related to his early education. Biographical notes, memorabilia, honours and awards give a good overview of his achievements and personal milestones.

Claude Bissell fonds

  • UTA 1060
  • Fonds
  • 1920-2002

Extensive records documenting the life and career of University of Toronto President Claude Bissell. Bissell served as President from 1958 to 1971.

Fonds consists of 15 accessions - see accession-level descriptions for further details.

Bissell, Claude Thomas

Bissell 2011 accession

Records document Claude Bissell’s personal and professional life. Unlike previous accessions, B2011-0018 contains extensive personal correspondence with family members especially while he was posted overseas during the 2nd World War as well as with his wife Christine (Series 4). There are also several series that document Bissell’s personal life rather than his professional life including his creativity through music, drama and poetry (Series 12) and his relationship with his brother Keith (Series 15). Nonetheless, most of the other records in this accession complete series of records found in earlier accessions and include many of his lectures (series 8 and 9), writings (Series 5 and 6) as well as his post-retirement diaries which completes an earlier run in B1988-0091 (Series 11). «

Bissell 1989 accession

Correspondence, notes, addresses, articles, reports, press clippings, and photoprints, largely relating to Claude Bissell's activities at the University of Toronto following his resignation as president in 1971, and his literary interests. Topics covered include the student movement in the 1960s, several presidential committees, the "University of Toronto Quarterly", the McLuhan programme, the Khaki University in Canada (1945-1946), and Frederick C. Wade's documents on the history of the University of Toronto (1920-1922).

Bissell 1993 accession

Correspondence, course notes, lecture notes, scrapbook, notes, manuscripts, articles, programs, photoprints, posters, and press clippings documenting the career of Claude Bissell as a student, a professor of English literature, and as an administrator, especially in his capacity as president of Carleton College (Ottawa) and the University of Toronto.

Bissell 2003 accession

Personal papers of Claude Thomas Bissell documenting his life as a student, professor in Canadian and English literature, university administrator and president of the Unversity of Toronto, and his activities after he stepped down as president. Includes personal correspondence; notes, essays and course material relating to his academic studies at the U of T and Cornell University; correspondence, memoranda and reports on university administration and structure; lecture notes; research materials, including index cards; files on professional activities; manuscripts of articles, addresses, and a photograph.

Teaching materials and lecture notes

The material in this series is organized in two parts, by files and by cards in “shoe boxes”. The files contain a variety of material including correspondence, reading lists, course outlines, lecture notes, other notes, and exam questions. The card boxes contain both notes and lectures.

The series beings with the file of correspondence, reading lists, course outlines and related material on the new course, ‘Studies in Canadian history and letters’, that Dr. Bissell began developing in 1946 with Donald Creighton. Other courses he taught in the immediate post-war period were ‘The modern novel’, for undergraduates, and ‘The late Victorian novel’ for graduates.

From the mid-1960s he taught a graduate course in ‘Canadian literature’ and, briefly, an undergraduate one in ‘Victorianism in the British Commonwealth’. After he stepped down as president, he taught courses in ‘Major Canadian writers’ and ‘Contemporary Canadian literary criticism’ at the graduate level. Also present are his teaching files from his sabbatical at Harvard University in 1967-1968 and the graduate course in Canadian literature he gave at the University of Leeds in the spring of 1973. These are followed by appraisals and correspondence relating to two theses Dr. Bissell supervised, one from 1952 and the other from 1983.

The cards are organized from the broader aspects of the study of literature to the specific study of individuals within the context of the literary traditions of their respective countries. The first cards are devoted to English literature, beginning with lectures on topics ranging from writing an essay and assembling a bibliography to modern thought, an introduction to poetry, the theory of comedy and drama, the short story, and the history of the novel. These cards are followed by notes and lecture notes on individual writers and poets, filed alphabetically and beginning with Matthew Arnold and ending with James Thomson. Most are Victorian novelists, though there are also files on earlier writers such as Chaucer, John Dryden and Sir Walter Scott, and early twentieth-century writers such as T. S. Eliot and John Galsworthy, and a scattering of French authors. This section ends with notes and lectures on Victorian thought, literature and poetry, the modern novel, and notes on social and historical issues, and philosophical, religious and scientific thought in Victorian England. Some of the notes appear to date from the late 1930s, while the lectures date from about 1946 through the early 1950s.

The following sets of cards have notes and lectures on Canadian, American, and Australian literature, politics and society that document the wide range of disciplines that Dr. Bissell mined in preparing his lectures. The first section on Canada is devoted to the Canadian novel (later “Canadian fiction”) for the academic years 1946-1947 to 1954-1955, followed by specific topics, writers, and poets, arranged more or less alphabetically. The topics include the contemporary Canadian novel, Canadian culture, best sellers (1896-1933), pre-Confederation poetry, the university question in the 1840s, the Canada First movement; journals such as Canadian Forum, The Varsity, and Canadian Monthly/National Review; economic history, the frontier, and the French-Canadian novel. There is even the text of an address from 1951. Dr. Bissell covers a wide range of novelists, newspapermen, poets, politicians, amongst whom are Bliss Carman, John W. Dafoe, Robertson Davies, Mazo de la Roche, Archibald Lampman; William Lyon Mackenzie King and his political adversary, Arthur Meighen; Charles Mair, Robert Service, Goldwin Smith, Daniel Wilson, Frederick Philip Grove, Abbé Lionel Groulx, T. C. Haliburton and Joseph Howe.

The cards with notes and lectures on American literature begin with general questions and an overview of the subject, but most are about individual writers, filed alphabetically. The principal figures discussed are Jacob Bailey, Jonathan Edwards, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Francis Parkman, Carl Sandburg and John Steinbeck.

These cards are followed by ones containing notes on Australian literature, a talk Dr. Bissell gave on Australia to the U of T Engineering Society in 1954, and notes on the Australian character.

Research notes and information files

This series consists of material, in the form of index cards and files that Dr. Bissell drew on primarily for his writings, lectures and addresses. A run of cards (boxes 010 and 011) forms the first part of this series and is closely related to the material in Series 5. The files, which contain notes, interviews, briefs, reports and addresses by academics, range more widely in scope and time (from the late 1930s to 1976).

The index cards cover Canadian, American, Australian and English literature, with some cards on Canadian political and cultural issues, filed alphabetically by subject and person, intermixed. They contain bibliographic references only (no lecture notes) and are related to
files of notes with similar headings found later in the series. Most of the index cards appear to have been compiled after Dr. Bissell began teaching at the U of T again in 1946. Some, especially those on Samuel Butler, the subject both of his masters and doctoral theses, are largely from the 1930s.

Subjects already introduced, such as Canadian literature, politics, and society, the novel, and Victorian England, have extensive bibliographic entries, as do new subjects, such as 20th century English literature, and satire. Some writers, especially Auguste Comte, George Eliot, Henry James, George Henry Lewes, and George Bernard Shaw, have extensive bibliographic references. A host of new names appear here, including Joseph Conrad, Robert Frost, Morley Callaghan, George Meredith and Herbert Spencer.

The first files in this series are devoted to Canadian subjects – cultural problems, political issues and Canadian studies in American universities and are concentrated in the years 1960-1975. The files on Canadian literature all date from the post-1950 period. There is a file of notes for the years 1960-1976 but most of the files are devoted to individuals, the principal ones being Morley Callaghan, Sara Jeanette Duncan, Frederick Philip Grove, T. C. Haliburton, Archibald Lampman, Hugh MacLeannan. They contain notes, drafts of articles, bibliographies and the occasionl letter. The remaining files, on English and American literature, consist mostly of notes that he compiled in the 1930s and are filed by topic. They are closely related to the index cards in Series 5.

Bissell 1st 1984 accession

Personal records of Claude Bissell, consisting of correspondence, lecture notes, addresses, manuscripts, pamphlets, press clippings, postcards and photographs documenting his career as a professor of English, president of the University of Toronto, and a writer. His private correspondents include J. B. Bickersteth, Earle Birney, E. K. Brown, Morley Callaghan, Robertson Davies, Marshall McLuhan and Elsie May Pomeroy. «

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