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Kenneth Neill Cameron Papers

Call Number

TAM.186

Date

1910-1992, inclusive

Creator

Cameron, Kenneth Neill (Role: Donor)

Extent

9 Linear Feet (12 boxes)

Language of Materials

English .

Abstract

Kenneth Neill Cameron (1908-1994), a Shelley scholar, best known for his four-volume Shelley and His Circle, was also the author of a biography of Joseph Stalin, and works on Marxist philosophy, world history, and ecology, and a volume of poetry. Cameron was a professor of English at Indiana University and later at New York University. The collection consists mainly of published and unpublished typescripts, including an incomplete autobiographical typescript, and correspondence, both editorial and personal. The unpublished typescripts include an incomplete autobiography, a biography of Enver Hoxha, Communist leader of Albania, several plays, and writings about several Communist leaders and heads of state. There are also articles, reviews, notes, reports, newspaper clippings, and various biographical materials, and materials related to his own political activities as a Communist, including his U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) file.

Historical/Biographical Note

Kenneth Neill Cameron (1908-1994), was a scholar of Percy Byshhe Shelley's writings and social and political milieu, best known for his four-volume Shelley and His Circle (1961-1970), and a Communist activist and author. Cameron was born in 1908 in Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire, England. He moved with his parents to Montreal in 1914, where he lived until he received his B.A. from McGill in 1931. As a Rhodes Scholar, he attended Oxford University and received a second B.A. in 1933, a D. Litt. in 1934, and an M.A. in 1936. He also received a Ph.D. in 1939 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and, much later, an honorary Ph.D. from McGill University in 1970.

Cameron first encountered radical politics in England, partly through his uncle Jack Cameron, who was a radical shipyard worker in Liverpool, and partly through campus activism at Oxford. In 1934 he visited the U.S.S.R. and was deeply moved by what he saw. Cameron joined the Canadian Communist Party around 1935. In 1936 he was the Toronto Executive Secretary of the League against War and Fascism.

At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Cameron studied under the scholar William Emery Leonard, and continued his activism in the Communist Party of the United States. In the fall of 1939, Cameron began what was to be a thirteen-year career at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he was especially active in the American Federation of Teachers and was also involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. At Indiana University, Cameron lived for a short while with Salvadore Luria, later a Nobel Laureate in Physics. Around the same time (1946), he married Mary Bess Owen, a professor of sociology.

In 1951, as the political climate became more hostile to Communists, partly as a result of the success of his first book, The Young Shelley: Genesis of a Radical (1950), Cameron left Indiana University and was given a job at the private Carl H. Pforzheimer Library, now part of the New York Public Library, in New York City. He edited Shelley and His Circle, overseeing the first four volumes produced by that library. During the 1950s, he was active in the disarmament movement in New York. In the 1960s he began teaching at New York University, first as an adjunct, and then as a full-time professor in 1963. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 for ongoing research on Shelley, which culminated in the publication of Shelley: The Golden Years, in 1974

In his later years, Cameron was involved in the movements against the Vietnam War, the far right, and nuclear testing. He was Professor Emeritus of English at NYU from 1974-75, and then retired. While his Shelley scholarship did not end here, he chiefly wrote on a number of other topics in the 1970s and 1980s, producing a book of poems in 1977, as well as several books on Marxism, a biography of Joseph Stalin, ecology, and a world history. He also wrote several unpublished manuscripts on Shelley, various Communist leaders and statesmen, including an unpublished book on Enver Hoxha, Communist leader of Albania, four unpublished plays, and his unfinished autobiography. He died in March, 1994.

Books by Cameron in chronological order:

The Young Shelley: Genesis of a Radical, Macmillan, 1950Editor, Percy Bysshe Shelley: Selected Poetry and Prose, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1951The Enormous Turtle (comic novel under the pseudonym Warren Madden), Bobbs-Merrill, 1954The Esdaile Notebook: A volume of Early Prose and Poetry by Shelley (1964)Shelley and His Circle (1961-1970)Romantic Rebels; Essays on Shelley and his Circle (1973)Humanity and Society: A World History (1973)Shelley: The Golden Years (1974)Marx and Engels Today: A Modern Dialogue on Philosophy and History (1976)Poems for Lovers and Rebels (Privately printed, 1977)Marxism: The Science of Society—An Introduction (1985) Stalin, Man of Contradiction (1987)Atmospheric Destruction and Human Survival (1992)Marxism: A Living Science (1993)Dialectical Materialism and Modern Science (1995)

Sources:

See also, "Town and Gown: Excerpt from the Bloomington, Indiana Memoir of Kenneth Neill Cameron, Communist Academic in the Working Class Movement." (Peter Meyer Filardo, ed.) Labor History, 36, no. 4 (1995): 612-24.

Arrangement

Material is unprocessed.

The files are organized into four series:

Missing Title

  1. I, Biographical
  2. II, Percy Bysshe Shelley
  3. III, Writings, Other
  4. IV, Miscellaneous Unprocessed Materials (box level descriptions available)

Scope and Content Note

Series I, Biographical, is divided into four subseries: A: Autobiography: Cameron began a full-length autobiography, but left it unfinished. The first seven chapters provide a detailed account of his life from 1908-1952, while the rest of the chapters are in rough draft format. Also included in this section are Cameron's notes and research for the autobiography, as well as several profiles of him written by colleagues in his literary field, including one Donald Reiman; B: Political Papers, Reviews, Clippings, and Notes: This section contains Cameron's FBI file, as well as documents and clippings from his political activities. It also contains book reviews and a "Personal Political Statement." C: Miscellaneous Biographical Material: contains various diplomas and grant applications which list Cameron's academic activities; D: Correspondence: Cameron kept a very active correspondence with his political uncle Jack in Liverpool. Also included in this section are business-related letters from academic institutions, as well as various personal letters, from Howard Fast, Salvadore Luria, Mrs. David Erdman, and other friends and family. NOTE: This collection is housed offsite and advance notice is required for use.

Series II, Shelley, is divided into four subseries; A: Shelley Correspondence: This section contains letters to and from colleagues in the literary field. William Emery Leonard and Carl H. Pforzheimer are just two of the numerous scholars who consulted Cameron on the subject of Shelley; B: Notes, Reports, and Memos: As editor of the Pforzheimer Library's Shelley collection, Cameron wrote up numerous reports and memos on the cataloging process and various acquisitions. Also documented is an exhibit of Lord Abinger's Shelley materials, and a research trip taken by Cameron in 1961; C: Articles: A number of articles on Shelley and Shelley scholarship. This section includes an early article by Elizabeth Cameron (Cameron's first wife) on Mary Wollstonecraft and an article by Cameron on Shelley and Marx from 1979; D: Reviews: This section contains reviews of Cameron's works, his replies to those reviews, and some correspondence with publishers of his Shelley scholarship.

Series III, Other Writings, is divided into three subseries: A: Novel and Plays: Cameron's comic novel The Enormous Turtle was published in 1954; this is an earlier draft, titled The Avenging Turtle, from around 1950. There are also four unpublished plays, two of which are also unfinished. One is about Shelley and the other three seem to be about political matters. B: Poetry: Cameron wrote poetry over the entire course of his life but the majority of his efforts were contained in the years 1950-1967. In this section are several drafts of some poems, but mostly one of each. The poems are both personal (some are quite graphic) and political. C: Marx Dialogues: Cameron wrote this rather long manuscript around 1971 and spent the next five years searching for a publisher. He eventually had them published, but in a much shorter form, as Marx and Engels Today: A Modern Dialogue on Philosophy and History (1976). This manuscript is his original version. The section also contains the publisher's rejection letters, as well as correspondence with figures such as Howard Zinn, Amiri Baraka, E. P. Thompson, Al Pinkney, Corliss Lamont, Herbert Aptheker, Andrew Rothstein, and Irwin Silber, from whom Cameron was trying to get pre-publication comments.

Series IV, Miscellaneous Unprocessed: This series contains published and unpublished writings and correspondence related thereto, some personal correspondence, including correspondence with Communist historian Herbert Aptheker, a folder relating to the W. Alphaeus Hunton College Teachers' Club of the CPUSA, and one relating to efforts to defend former East German Communists from prosecution. The manuscripts include an unpublished biography of Enver Hoxha, Communist leader of Albania, whole or partial drafts of several of his published works, chapter length published and unpublished writings on Nikolai Bukharin, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedung, sociobiology, and various Marxist-oriented historical and philosophical topics.

Conditions Governing Access

Materials are open without restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright (and related rights to publicity and privacy) to materials in this collection created by Kenneth Neill Cameron was not transferred to New York University. Permission to use materials must be secured from the copyright holder.

Preferred Citation

Published citations should take the following form:

Identification of item, date; Kenneth Neill Cameron Papers; TAM 185; box number; folder number;
Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012, New York University Libraries.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Donated by Kenneth Neill Cameron in 1994 according to the terms of his last will and testament (1993). The accession number associated with this gift is 1993.010.

Collection processed by

Molly Kovel, 1999; Peter Filardo, 2009

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-20 16:55:58 -0400.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: Description is in English.

Edition of this Guide

Cameron Inventory Tam #186.doc

Repository

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012