Robert Hine papers

The collection spans the years 1841-2001, though the majority of it dates between 1960 and 1990. Almost all of the materials dated before the 1950s are reproductions made at Hine's request for reference in his research and writing, and many of them concern the 19th century figures Edward Kern, John Russell Bartlett, Josiah Royce and Theodore Talbot.

The collection is organized to preserve, whenever possible, Robert Hine's original order. This includes most of his original folder titles, the original order of folders, and the original order of some of the boxes. As such there are small portions of it that do not follow the rules of cataloging to the letter (as in ascending date orders, etc). The collection contains Hine's professional work as a historian of the American West and a writer, and includes research notes, photocopied manuscripts, newspaper clippings, interviews, correspondence, and other research related papers. As such, the original order of Hine's papers reflects his process of collecting and referencing them as he worked on various book projects. In some instances, his original folders provide insight into the kinds of questions or themes he was pursuing in the course of his work. Box 16, Folder 6, for example, relates to his work on California's colonies and communes and is titled "Family," reflecting his special interest in this aspect of communal life. Hine also revised the organization of these papers as he prepared them for donation to the Huntington Library in the late 1990s. Despite Hine's own curatorship, some of his papers remained unsorted and unorganized at the time of this collection's cataloging. Those have been organized by the cataloger to reflect, as much as possible, Hine's own organizational methods.

To this end, the boxes of the collection are organized largely according to the book or other scholarly project for which Hine obtained them, with the exception of the boxes that house correspondence. Boxes 1-22 pertain to Hine's work on California's colonies and communes, and in particular the books California's Utopian Colonies (1973) and Community on the American Frontier: Separate but Not Alone (1985). Within this series, boxes 1-12 are an alphabetical subseries of the communes by name; boxes 13 and 14 are a subseries dedicated specifically to the Llano Commune; boxes 15-18 are a miscellaneous subseries organized largely by subject (i.e. Family in colonies and communes); boxes 19-22 are miscellaneous notes, citations, and bibliographic index cards. Boxes 23-26 pertain to Hine's research into John Russell Bartlett and the book Bartlett's West: Drawing the Mexican Boundary (1969); boxes 27-30 relate to his work on Josiah Royce and the book Josiah Royce: From Grass Valley to Harvard; boxes 31-33 relate to his work on Edward Kern and the book In the Shadow of Fremont: Edward Kern and the Art of American Exploration (1982); boxes 34-35 pertain to his research into Theodore Talbot and the book Soldiers in the West: Letters of Theodore Talbot During His Services in California, Mexico, and Oregon, 1845-53 (1972); box 36 relates to his memoir Second Sight (1993); boxes 37-39 contain miscellaneous research material, including chapter notes for California's Utopian Colonies, scholarly reviews of his books, and miscellaneous secondary scholarship; boxes 40-43 contain correspondence, largely with other historians but also notably with (then California governor) Ronald Reagan; boxes 44-47 contain bibliographic index cards; box 48 contains audio-visual material; box 49 contains ephemera; and lastly box 50 contains oversize material.

There are a few things to note about the collection. First, it contains a number of oversize items housed in separate oversize folders. The items are marked by the presence of a "dummy folder" where they would have been filed, had they not been oversize. Many of the oversize items are duplications (photocopies, prints) of artwork done by John Russell Bartlett and Edward Kern, made while Hine was researching their artistic work in the West. This collection also contains a number of boxes in which the material is not sorted into numbered folders. These are the indexcard boxes (Boxes 19-22 and 44-47), which contain bibliographic records and the Miscellaneous Notes and Citations boxes, which contain half-sheet sized research notes, many regarding the secondary literature relevant to his book projects. In some respects, the kinds of notes contained in these boxes are similar to the notes Hine filed in folders in the grey upright boxes, and in some cases he made makeshift dividers to separate the notes into related groups. Lastly, it is important to note that Hine took many notes in Braille during the years he was blind. In some cases, Hine himself translated the Braille into English as he prepared the collection for donation to the Huntington Library; often, however, the Braille remained untranslated. The boxes relating to Hine's work on Colonies and Communes contain the majority of the Braille notes.