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History of the Series

In 1878, Percy Graeme Turnbull was born into a prominent and wealthy Baltimore family, one whose literary connections were already established and growing. Among other substantial correspondence may be found the record of Lawrence and Francese Turnbull's admiration and close friendship with the poet Sidney Lanier, for whose grave illness and death in 1881 the Turnbulls solicited contributions and organized remembrances for many years to come. Lawrence Turnbull (1821-1900) went on to become a widely admired publisher, and Francese Turnbull (1845?-1927) wrote novels and established the Woman's Literary Club in Baltimore in 1890, which met regularly, and to which she read many presentations, until the year of her death.

There were five Turnbull children: Edwin Litchfield (1872-1927), Eleanor Laurelle (1875-1964), Percy Graeme (1878-1887), Bayard (1879?-1954), and Grace Hill (1880-1976). Edwin became a concert violinist and musical director, Eleanor published poetry and translations of Spanish poets, Bayard became a renowned architect, and Grace distinguished herself in painting and sculpture. Percy Graeme Turnbull was already showing signs of his substantial literary gifts at the time of his unexpected death of 1887: he was already writing letters to his father in Latin.

Recognizing the extent of their loss, the Turnbulls approached Johns Hopkins with an offer to fund visits by prominent scholars and poets. Beginning with Edmund Clarence Stedman in March of 1891, the lecture series quickly established itself, through the generous $1,000 annual donation, as one of the premier lectureships in the nation. A partial list of the luminaries--T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Harold Bloom, Charles Eliot Norton (whose name now graces a similar series held annually at Harvard), Ronald Paulson, Richard Lattimore, Randall Jarrell, Marianne Moore, Richard Wilbur, and Robert Frost--cannot do justice to the scope of the series, nor to the individual contributions of each invitee. A complete listing of the lectures and an index of the lecturers is available on this site, as well as a growing list of publications stemming from the lectures.

As can be surmised from the above, the Turnbull lectures are now in their 114th year, having run almost continually since 1891, with interruptions during the two world wars. Despite the visibility of the lecturers and the strong institutional interest in maintaining the series, a lengthy gap exists, from 1984 to 1996. Shortly after Modernist poetry critic Joseph N. Riddel's lecture in 1984, the series ceased (for reasons internal to Johns Hopkins I have heard rumors about, but will leave out until such time as they have been confirmed).

Then, in 1996, as described in the Johns Hopkins Magazine, Professor Stephen Nichols of the Romance Languages department attended a conference on academic libraries at Columbia University.

While he was there, he chatted with a professor from the Sorbonne and Columbia University named Antoine Compagnon. Compagnon was researching a 19th-century French intellectual, Ferdinand Brunetiere, who was the foremost French intellectual of his day. According to Compagnon's research, Brunetiere had delivered five lectures at Hopkins in 1897. Then-president Daniel Coit Gilman had invited the intellectual to deliver something called the Turnbull Lectures. What, Compagnon asked, were the Turnbull Lectures?

Unable to provide an answer, Nichols returned to Johns Hopkins and began querying faculty, deans, and archivists. His efforts and those of others, including Richard Macksey and Stephen Knapp, established the scaffolding for the current historical project, but more importantly, led to the discovery that since the cessation of the lecture series, interest had accrued in the Turnbull's investments for the fund to the tune of $160,000.

As a token of appreciation for having led to the discovery of the fund and the history of the lectures, Nichols invited Compagnon to deliver the inaugural lecture of the reinvigorated series. True to his initial inquiry, Compagnon spoke on the works of Ferdinand Brunetiere. In lectures over the next four years, it was primarily under the auspices of the Romance Languages department and lecturers on Spanish poetry prevailed.

Shortly before the turn of the Millennium, a committee was convened to study the history and future direction of the Turnbull lectures. It was determined at that time that the reins would be granted to the Department of the Writing Seminars. Since that time, a number of intellectual luminaries and established poets have delivered lectures: William H. Gass, C. K. Williams, W. S. Merwin, Harold Bloom, Dave Smith (upon his arrival and investiture as the Elliott Coleman Professor of Poetry in the Writing Seminars), William H. Pritchard, Jahan Ramazani, and, in the spring of 2005, Helen Vendler.

This website represents but a slice of the information being currently collected under the auspices of this project. Together with Maren Chumley, and with the invaluable assistance from Professors Macksey, Irwin, McGarry, Nichols, Mrs. Kidder, and others, I am currently collecting materials for the purposes of creating a repository and a meaningful history of this long-running and important lecture series.

We are extending an open invitation to those who may have contributions to make in the history of the Turnbull lectures. If you, as a consequence of perusing this information, have access to, or have seen or heard of, materials that may prove helpful in constructing this history, please contact me, Douglas Basford, at (410) 516-7563. We welcome corrections, as well as information about the individual lectures (published or unpublished), lacunae, anecdotes, images and photographs, and all manner of other relevant material, archival, oral, or otherwise.

Douglas Basford
Oct. 28, 2004

Works Cited

Keiger, Dale. "Forgotten Lecture Series Resurrected." Johns Hopkins Magazine. Nov. 1996.

La Paix Collection. PP105. Maryland Historical Society. Container list.

Litchfield, Grace Denio. Papers. Ms. 417. Special Collections. Milton S. Eisenhower Library. The Johns Hopkins University. Finding guide.

Macksey, Richard A. "The Percy Graeme Turnbull Memorial Lectures." Maryland Wits & Baltimore Bards. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1985.

Turnbull, Francese Hubbard Litchfield. Papers. Ms. 229. Special Collections. Milton S. Eisenhower Library. The Johns Hopkins University. Finding guide.

Turnbull, Bayard. Papers. PP105. Maryland Historical Society. Container list.

Turnbull, Edwin Litchfield. Papers. Ms. 103. Special Collections. Milton S. Eisenhower Library. The Johns Hopkins University. Finding guide.

Turnbull, Eleanor. Papers. Ms. 55. Special Collections. Milton S. Eisenhower Library. The Johns Hopkins University. Finding guide.

Turnbull family. Papers PP57. Maryland Historical Society. Container list.

Turnbull, Francese Hubbard Litchfield. Papers. PP105. Maryland Historical Society. Container list.

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