Clarence Shepard Day, Jr.: A bibliographic and critical study

Clarence Shepard Day, Jr. (November 18, 1874 - December 28, 1935), was an American humorist whose popularity in the 1920s and 1930s was primarily the result of the publication of God and My Father (1932), Life With Father (1935), and Life With Mother (published posthumously in 1937). Despite the fact that Day was a popular author in his own era, there has been little substantive and no comprehensive research done on Day. There is no Day

bibliography available to researchers and scholars. The absence of Day research may be because The Clarence Day Papers have not been available for study; the Papers were donated to The New York Public Library 1996-2001 by Day's daughter, Mrs. Wilhelmine Blower. Significant and substantive research on Day and his work is now possible. The absence of a comprehensive Day bibliography of manuscript collections, primary and secondary sources, has

limited the possibility for Day research and has produced a critical, historical and literary gap in American literature and popular culture of the 1920s and 1930s. This thesis includes a biography of Day, including previously unpublished information provided by his daughter; a representative literature review of critical opinion; key findings resulting from the compilation of the bibliography; and, finally, a comprehensive bibliography of manuscript collections, primary and secondary sources, and eight appendices of

chronological bibliographies which document Day's published work in periodicals. It is certainly arguable that Day, whose work was so critically andcommercially successful in his own time, deserves re -discovery and reevaluation in ours. Consequently, a comprehensive Day bibliography will make possible subsequent steps in the re -discovery and re-evaluation process.