About the Collection
About the Letters
The William Elliot Griffis Papers contain twenty-one series, of which "Correspondence" is composed of three subseries: Japan Letters, Korea Letters, and China Letters. Korea Letters has 420 items (1,087 sheets), of which 375 are letters (613 sheets). Senders are identified, materials (both typed and handwritten) are transcribed, and the entire text is annotated. The monograph, Korea Letters in the William Elliot Griffis Collection: An Annotated Selection (2024) includes a selection of Korea Letters sent by 61 missionaries mostly stationed in Korea in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, 21 historically significant Koreans and Japanese officials, and 35 institutions such as publishers, colleges and museums, and 44 individuals such as politicians, professors, and lawyers Griffis consulted.
Due to space limitations, many letters not selected for the book may instead be found here. For instance, Alice Rebecca Appenzeller (1885-1950), the daughter of a pioneering Methodist missionary Henry Gerhart Appenzeller (1858-1902) and the first American born in Korea, corresponded extensively with Griffis before and after her appointment as a missionary teacher at Ewha Haktang where she ultimately served as president. Her 32 letters to Griffis, spanning 1911 to 1927, are included here. The following list illustrates the entire subseries; the marked ones may be found in the digital collection but not the book.
See: Korea Letters Subseries in the Griffis Collection
About the Unpublished Manuscripts
In the two series, "Manuscripts" and “Collected Manuscripts” in the Griffis Collection, there are sixteen manuscripts related to Korea. [1] through [6] seem more significant, given the dates they were written (1911-1928). [1], [2], and [3] concern Griffis’s 1927 trip to Korea while [4], [5], and [6] were written after the March 1st Independence Movement of 1919 when Griffis started to publish articles critical of Japanese repressive rule. [7] contains Griffis's views on the Sino-Japanese War, and [8] is a short essay about the origin of a Korean bugbear. [9]-[12] appear to be fragments either used for his publications or saved for future use. The last four, [13]-[16] are notes prepared for galley proofs of Corea: The Hermit Nation.
[1] The Land of Morning Splendor [50-page typed manuscript, written after his 1927 Korea trip]
[2] Congregationalism in Korea [5-page typed manuscript, written in April 1927]
[3] Around the Ewha Table [4-page typed transcription written in 1926. Not written by Griffis.]
[4] Korea: The Lady of Kingdoms [7-page typed manuscript written either on or after 1921]
[5] Cupid in Korea [8-page typed manuscript written just before the wedding of the Korean Prince Heir and Princess Masako of Japan (1920)]
[6] The Civilization of Korea [38-page typed manuscript written in 1919]
[7] The New Korean, and the Japanese War [12-page typed manuscript with a hand-written note]
[8] A Corean Bugbear [7-page hand-written story]
[9] The American Boys in Korea [34-page hand-written story written in August 1911; the first chapter of a longer fiction]
[10] Korean Topknots and Marriage [19-pages typed manuscript]
[11] Notes on Korea [14 page hand-written notes on yang-ban and other historical/geographical information]
[12] Manuscript on Korea Cities [17-page typed manuscript. It is not a manuscript written by Griffis.]
[13] Chronology of China, Korea, Japan and the West [6-page handwritten note]
[14] Preface to the Ninth Edition of Corea, The Hermit Nation [galley proof]
[15] Origins of the Three Kingdoms [54-page handwritten note]
[16] Corea: The Hermit Nation Notes [20-page note]
In this collection, we provide transcriptions of the following seven manuscripts written by Griffis and of a conversation "Around the Ewha Table" that Griffis obtained from Ewha Woman's University.
- Around the Ewha Table
- The Civilization of Korea
- Congregationalism in Korea
- A Corean Bugbear
- Cupid in Korea
- Korea: The Lady of Kingdom
- The Land of Morning Splendor
- The New Korean and the Japanese War
This project was funded by a grant from the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation, Seoul, Korea.