Margaret C. Patterson and Author Newsletters and Journals

              A REFERENCE BOOK THAT DESERVES ANOTHER LOOK

   There are periodicals devoted to specific people and, for lack of a better name, they are usually referred to as “single author journals.” Scholars, or those very interested in an individual, establish a journal dedicated to the life and/or works of that person. If you are curious about whether your favorite author has been favoured with such devotion, it is not too difficult to find out. A search of their name would reveal if there is a publication about them.

  If you are curious and wonder what other individuals rate such attention you will find it very difficult to identify them because there is not a specific subject heading for something like, “people with periodicals about them.”  There is no easy way to find the group of individuals, who have their own single author journal. 

   The difficult task of locating such journals was undertaken around fifty years ago by Margaret C. Patterson. The results are provided in: Author Newsletters and Journals : An International Annotated Bibliography of Serial Publications Concerned With the Life and Works of Individual Authors. Although this major work of reference is an old one, it has not been superseded and it is an essential source for anyone attempting to track down these elusive serial publications. 

   The effort required to produce a work such as this was substantial and the work required to duplicate it in our own time would be as well. It is international in scope, and somehow the author was able to find over 1000 single author journals which were often fitfully produced, with titles that were frequently altered and many of which were written in languages other than English. 

   Entries are arranged alphabetically by author and considerable bibliographic information is provided. As well, there are several appendices, including one that identifies the publications by country. There are 1,129 titles relating to 435 authors from 28 countries. That there are more titles than authors is explained by the fact that some authors are featured in more than one of these serial publications. There are 24 for Goethe, 23 for Dante, nine for James Joyce, seven for Mark Twain and there are several others that have more than one periodical devoted to them. 

  After the publication of Author Newsletters and Journals, Patterson updated her research, providing information about new publications and those that had ceased. Those interested should see the following sources, all produced by Patterson:

“Author Newsletters and Journals: Supplement 1, Serials Review, Winter, 1982. P.61; “Author Newsletters and Journals: Supplement 2, Serials Review, Spring, 1984, p. 51 and “Author Newsletters and Journals,” Serials Review, Fall, 1985, p.31.

   Author Newsletters and Journals, was not widely reviewed. The two found are: a short notice under “Potpourri,” in Library Journal, May 15, 1980, p.1147, and one by Alan Bell in the Modern Language Review, Vol.76, No.2, April 1981, p.420.

MARGARET CLEVELAND PATTERSON was born in 1923 and spent most of her career at the University of Florida in the English Department. She was also a consultant for Gale Research Co. For more details see: "Margaret C(leveland) Patterson." Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors, Gale, 2001.