Guide to the Charles Garside Jr. papers, 1953-1987

Biographical Note

Charles Garside was born in New York City on June 27, 1927. His father, Charles Sr., was a prominent New York Lawyer who, in 1947-49, chaired the state's first Commission Against Discrimination. The elder Garside died in November, 1964.

Garside was educated at St. Bernard's School for Boys and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1944. After service in the navy, he received his A.B. with honors from Princeton in 1950. One year later he received an M.A. from Columbia University, and in 1957 he was awarded a doctorate in history at Yale University. Between Columbia and Yale, Garside taught at Hotchkiss, a private secondary school in Connecticut.

Garside stayed on at Yale to teach as a member of the history department. Garside continued at Yale for almost a decade, moving up from Instructor to Associate professor. For three years he served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in History. In his time at Yale, he was also Assistant Master of Timothy Dwight College from 1961-1963 and was Executive Fellow of that college from 1963-1966. While at Yale Garside won wide acclaim for his scholarship, his eloquence as a speaker, and for his dedication to his students.

In 1966, when Garside left Yale for Rice, he was honored with a lifetime appointment as Associate Fellow of Timothy Dwight College, and the undergraduates endowed in his honor the Garside Cup. This award to be given to an outstanding senior who best exemplified his talents. One of the reasons Garside chose Rice was for its Ivy league style college system, a system Garside considered to be the only proper way to organize undergraduate living.

At Rice, Garside became a respected member of the faculty and furthered his reputation as a teacher whose focus was on his students. Garside achieved his full Professorship at Rice in 1978. Between 1973 and 1983, Garside's former students voted him five George R. Brown Awards, an award given annually for outstanding teaching. Members of Baker College at Rice, where he was an Executive Associate, honored him with the college's Service Award in 1970.

Well versed in history, literature, music, and the arts, Garside's particular area of scholarly interest was the Renaissance and the Reformation, especially the relationship between the Reformation and the arts. On this topic he was a renowned authority and he published many scholarly works including the books: Zwingli and the Arts in 1966 and The Origins of Calvin's Theory of Music in 1979. In 1974-75, Garside served as President of The American Society for Reformation Research. At the time of his death, Garside was working on a biography of John Calvin, the great Protestant reformer.

Garside died June 11, 1987, from complications associated with a stroke suffered in May of that year. Garside never married and at the time of his death was survived by his mother, brother, sister, and eight nieces and nephews.

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Scope and Contents

Baker College material, teaching and History Dept. records, academic and scholarly correspondence, notes and drafts of books, articles, and lectures, as well as a quantity of Renaissance-Reformation subject files document the faculty and scholarly activities of Charles Garside Jr. (1927-1987). These papers cover the period 1953 to 1987. This represents roughly the second half of Garside's life or, from another perspective, from about the time he began his history Ph.D. work at Yale onward.

The papers bulk in the Teaching Records and Material series with 4.5 linear feet of Renaissance - Reformation subject files. These subject files can be further subdivided into two types: course specific subject files (2.5 ft.) and non-course specific subject files (2 ft.). It is likely that these subject files were created for either of two needs: teaching purposes or as the result of research towards a particular book or article. It is also seems likely that it a subject file was created out of research purposes, once the book or article was published the file would added to the rest, simply as more lecture source material. These subject files contain primarily handwritten and typed notes with some reprint material.

The papers bulk again in the series Scholarly Papers with 1 ft. of notes, drafts, and correspondence concerning the many books, articles, reviews, papers, speeches and lectures published or presented by Garside. The papers also well represent (1 ft.) the fact that Garside was a member of numerous history and Renaissance-Reformation oriented professional organizations/scholarly societies. Garside served as President of The American Society for Reformation Research for several years and much of the material here is correspondence.

The Garside papers contain very little (.5 ft.) of a personal nature. The most important material here being several folders of personal correspondence and some address books. Garside was a man of such high scholarship, so intensely devoted to teaching and university life, that if were not for original order it would be difficult to distinguish his personal correspondence from his scholarly correspondence. A few photographs, a number of recipes in a variety of handwritings and some poetry in Garside's handwriting provide some small insight into his nature and life outside the walls of academia.

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Restrictions

Access Restrictions

This material is open for research.

Use Restrictions

Permission to publish from the Charles Garside, Jr. papers must be obtained from the Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.

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Detailed Description of the Collection

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