Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia - The Final Work

The Final Work

The Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia, published in 1941, consists of 674 pages with well over 4,000 quotations arranged alphabetically by topic or subject, from "Abbey Theatre" to "Youth." Thousands of topics and subjects are listed, counting the extensive cross-reference entries. The original source of each quotation is given, and if the passage appears in the Charles Scribner's Sons editions of the Works of Theodore Roosevelt (1923–1926), volume and page numbers are listed for the National (20 volumes) and/or Memorial (24 volumes) editions. A guide or chart for the Scribner's Memorial and National editions is provided in the "Editors' Note" at the beginning of the Cyclopedia, listing the basic contents of each volume.

Most of the quotations are taken from the Scribner's editions of the Works of Theodore Roosevelt, but approximately 380 quotations in the Cyclopedia, not counting excerpts from letters, are from articles, speeches, and other sources not included in the Scribner's editions. Additionally, over forty recorded conversations are quoted, most of these not in the Scribner's editions. The editors of the Cyclopedia, Albert Bushnell Hart and Herbert Ronald Ferleger, unfortunately, did not make use of the unpublished letters in the Theodore Roosevelt Papers at the Library of Congress or of other collections of unpublished papers. And the eight-volume Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, based on the Theodore Roosevelt Papers at the Library of Congress and other collections, came out in the 1950s, and therefore was not available to the editors.

Only one unpublished letter is quoted in the Cyclopedia: TR to the Rev. William W. Moir, October 10, 1898, pp. 534–535, explaining how to pronounce the name Roosevelt. Fortunately, however, many published TR letters were available to the editors in the 1920s and 1930s, most notably in Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children (1919), covering the years 1898-1911, edited by Joseph Bucklin Bishop, included in both Scribner's National and Memorial editions; Letters from Theodore Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, 1870-1918 (1924); Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884-1918 (1925), two volumes; My Brother Theodore Roosevelt (1921) by Corinne Roosevelt Robinson; and Theodore Roosevelt and His Time, Shown in His Letters (1920), two volumes, by Joseph Bucklin Bishop, included in the Memorial edition.

Bishop, whose biography had been authorized by TR before the former President's death, had complete access to what became the collection of Theodore Roosevelt Papers at the Library of Congress. Over 670 quotations in the Cyclopedia are from letters by Roosevelt.