Savery's Work Diaries

After Christmas in 1929 Savery was given an empty sturdily bound manuscript book in which she recorded information about Suffolk, family history, and--eventually--thousands of entries about what she was writing, had completed, or sold. This book, the fair copy that she wrote out by hand in 1973 for the Knight Library at the University of Oregon, and the digital facsimile edition of the original diary that I prepared in 2006, are the primary references about her work. She also kept a record of manuscript submissions and acceptances in four small memorandum books, and these are invaluable in tracing, especially, her unpublished works. These work records, together with a log book containing an accounting of income from her writing, are in the manuscript collection at the Knight Library, University of Oregon. Two of the digital facsimiles are in private hands, and there is a copy in the de Grummond Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi as well as the one in Oregon. The memorandum books were also scanned and indexed.

Original Work Diary, Fair Copy, and Memorandum Books:

Original Diary	Fair Copy	Green Memo Book	Tan and Blue Books	Red Memo Book

Facsimile, with annotation of contents:

When I visited Savery's goddaughter, Elizabeth Hummerstone, in February of 2010, I was pleased to discover that Savery had continued her work diary from 1973 to 1998 and had made a true copy as before. I scanned and indexed these, a Black Diary, a Red Diary, and a Blue Diary (open in illustration), then sent them on to the University of Oregon archives. Within a week after that my hard drive failed taking with it those diary scans. The bad news is that I cannot reproduce Savery's pages with her handwritten entries. The good news is that I had transcribed these diaries, and my digital transcriptions are available as a .pdf-file. This file is part of the Constance Savery archive in the Lena Y. de Grummond Collection of Children's Literature at the University of Southern Mississippi, or if you were to write to me with an email address, I can send you a copy.

Text of this web site © 2010-2024 by Eric Schonblom. The unpublished works of Constance Savery are reproduced with the permission of her literary heir and copyright owner, J. D. Hummerstone. Updated August 29, 2024.