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Archival
Professor Odell Shepard’s The Cabin Down the Glen
by Peter Knapp ’65
 Many alumni will remember Odell Shepard (1884-1967), the James J. Goodwin Professor of English Literature from 1917 to 1946. A Pulitzer Prize-winning author as well as editor and literary critic, he wrote non-fiction, fiction, essays, and poetry. In addition to pursuing a teaching and literary career, Shepard was interested in politics and was elected in 1940 to one term as lieutenant-governor of Connecticut on the Democratic ticket. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Pedlar’s Progress: The Life of Bronson Alcott (1937), a literary biography of the prominent Transcendentalist and father of Louisa May Alcott. Among other notable books by Shepard are: The Harvest of a Quiet Eye (1927), collected essays and poems that are reflections on walking excursions through his beloved Connecticut; The Lore of the Unicorn (1930), a history of the legendary creature as a literary motif; and two historical novels written with his son, Willard: Holdfast Gaines (1946) and Jenkins’ Ear (1951), the latter a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Shepard left Trinity in 1946, returning occasionally to lecture at the College before his death in 1967.
Shepard’s literary papers came to Trinity where they are part of the manuscript collections in the Watkinson Library. In the early 1990s, Rick Sowash, a scholar fascinated by Shepard and his publications, visited the Watkinson to see the papers. Much to his astonishment he discovered among them an unpublished manuscript entitled The Cabin Down the Glen, which reflects on a solitary sojourn of several months’ duration in the early 1930s in a rustic cabin Shepard built in northwestern Connecticut, near Riverton. Like Thoreau in Walden or Henry Beston in the Outermost House, Shepard presents his reflections on man’s relationship with nature, a backdrop against which he discusses broader issues of change in culture and society. Written apparently in 1934, the manuscript was set aside, Shepard perhaps thinking that its publication was not appropriate at a time when larger events were unfolding on the national and international stage. Sowash edited the manuscript and contributed a foreword and afterword. Although he received permission from Shepard’s family to publish the book, Sowash was not successful in getting it into print. Eventually he founded his own firm, Rick Sowash Publishing Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, that specializes in books on history, animals, and folklore. Sowash published The Cabin Down the Glen this past spring, and further information about this fascinating book may be obtained from the Sowash Publishing Company’s Web site at www.sowash.com.
Although more than 70 years have passed since Odell Shepard wrote Cabin Down the Glen, this book by a distinguished author and long-time member of Trinity’s faculty is of compelling interest and worthy of attention. The preservation of its manuscript in Shepard’s papers underscores the importance of manuscript collections for the research community and ultimately the reader.
Archival is drawn from material on Trinity’s history in the Watkinson Library, the special collections department of the Raether Library and Information Technology Center. Trinity alumni seeking historical information about the College are welcome to contact Special Collections Librarian and College Archivist Peter Knapp at (860) 297-2268. Additional information may be found on the Web at www.trincoll.edu/depts/library/watkinson/watk_intro.html.
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