Collection Summary

Creator: Glenn, Garrard
Title: The Papers of Garrard Glenn, 1901-1947
Accession: MSS 78-1
Description: 3 boxes, 48 diaries
Location: SC - Basement
Photograph Collection: View 0 digitized photographs
Digitized Content: 1 objects
Use Restrictions: There are no restrictions.

Collection Description & Arrangement

This collection is comprised of Mr. Glenn's diaries (1901-1947) and correspondence (1927-1947). The correspondents include Harlan F. Stone, who was dean of Columbia Law School when Glenn was there, John Woolsey, John Bassett Moore, Alfred Knopf, Learned Hand, and Augustus Hand.

Biographical & Historical Information

Garrard Glenn was born in Atlanta, Georgia on 17 August 1878. His parents were Helen Garrard and John Thomas Glenn, a veteran of the Civil War. Garrard received his B.A. in 1899 from the University of Georgia where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Alpha Epsilon. He went to Columbia Law School from which he received an LL.B. in 1903; while a student there he served on the editorial board of the Columbia Law Reviewwith John M. Woolsey, founder of the journal. Upon graduating he worked five years for Davies, Stone and Auerbach in New York. He then helped establish the firm of Shattuck and Glenn.

In 1913 Glenn began lecturing at Columbia and continued there as a part-time associate professor until 1921. He had devised a course called Creditors' Rights which so impressed the Columbia faculty that they hired him to teach it. In early 1927 Glenn turned down the offer of a teaching position at the University of Virginia Law School, but in December he decided to accept. He was the James Monroe Professor of Law from 1929 until his death in 1949. Glenn, a well-loved and respected professor, taught Trusts, Equity, Corporations, Evidence, Creditors' Rights, Security and Insurance.

Garrard Glenn's prolific writing career began while he was a student and extended through the years of ill-health preceding his death. In 1910 he published Secret Liens and in 1915, Creditors' Rights, a major work in an area of the law which he helped bring into focus. World War I prompted him to write The Army and the Law, and in 1931 he published Fraudulent Conveyances. Naturally after he began teaching Glenn had more time for scholarship, and in the thirties and forties his most respected works were written. Glenn on Liquidation appeared in 1935, and the three-volume work, Glenn on Mortgages, was published in 1943. His first casebook, Cases on Creditors' Rights came out in 1940, as did a revised edition of Fraudulent Conveyances, and Cases on Equity, co-authored with Kenneth Redden, appeared in 1946. He served as editorial adviser for Jurisprudence in Virginia and West Virginia and the Restatement of the Law of Security. Glenn produced more than 40 major articles for law reviews across the country and covered topics from creditors' rights to Sir Thomas More, whom he felt should be the patron saint of his profession. While at the University, he served on the faculty committee of the Virginia Quarterly Review and was a faculty advisor to the Virginia Law Review.

In 1909 Glenn married Rosa Aubrey Wood, and they had two sons, Garrard W. and John Forsyth, both of whom received law degrees at the University of Virginia; the sons are often referred to as "Fox" and "Rab", respectively, in the correspondence. The Glenns lived at "Spring Hill" in Ivy, and Glenn did most of his writing in the library of his home. He enjoyed collecting rare books for his personal library and often advised alumni and Frances Farmer about purchases of rare items for the Law Library.

Acquisition Information

Date Received 1977
Donor Information Given by Mrs. Glenn and Harvard Law Library (one item found in book).

Content List

Diaries 1901-1947 Red-bound Volumes, Handwritten Correspondence

Box 1:

  • Correspondence (correspondents include Edwin A. Alderman and William Minor Lile) 1927, 1930-31
  • Correspondence 1932
  • Correspondence 1933
  • Correspondence (J.B. Moore, Harlan F. Stone, John M. Woolsey) 1934 January-June
  • Correspondence (J.B. Moore, Harlan F. Stone, John M. Woolsey, Learned Hand, T. Catesby Jones) 1935
  • Correspondence (J.B. Moore, Harlan F. Stone, John M. Woolsey, and Thomas Reed Powell) 1936

Box 2:

  • Correspondence (include J.L. Newcomb) 1937
  • Correspondence (include Alfred Knopf and J. L. Newcomb) 1938
  • Correspondence (J. B. Moore, Harlan F. Stone, John M. Woolsey, Augustus Hand, T. Catesby Jones, Alfred Knopf, and James A. McLaughlin) 1939
  • Correspondence (include Harlan F. Stone) 1940
  • Correspondence (include Alfred Knopf, Harlan F. Stone, and John M. Woolsey) 1941
  • Correspondence (include Harlan F. Stone) 1942

Box 3:

  • Correspondence (include Harlan F. Stone and William H. White) 1943
  • Correspondence - (include correspondence with Harlan F. Stone. Also included is a proposal for a graduate program at the Law School and an authorization adopted by the University Senate December 9, 1944) 1944, 1947, n.d.
  • Glenn Letter to [Judson Adams] Crane 1931, Oct. 2
    Typed Class Notes taken for Taxation with Frank Goodnow at Columbia. 1903
  • University of Virginia. Corporations I. Examination. 1931, December 19
  • The Case Law of Prohibition: Lest We Forget. Address of Garrard Glenn at the Anual Meeting of the Atlanta Bar Association. 1933, June 15
  • Miscellaneous drafts of speeches and articles. n.d.; 1931-1938, 1940-1941, 1951
  • 1941; Poster re Urgent Announcement from UVA President J. L. Newcomb asking students of 21 years or more to report to fill forms for the National Selective Service Headquarters on Wednesday, December 10, 1941.
  • The Lawyers' Common-Place Book with an alphabetical index of about one thousand titles, which occur in legal study and practice by John T. Glenn, Atlanta, James P. Mason & Co., 1858. Annotated copy.

Box 4:

  • Principles of Political Economy by Charles Gide, Boston, D. C. Heath & Co., 1897; with Glenn's annotations as a senior at the University of Georgia. 1898
  • A poet's guide to Equity Pleading.  University of Virginia Examination Book with the poetic reply of Mr. Thomas W. Blake to the inquiries of Prof. Garrard Glenn in Equity Pleading (1932). There is an "Apolegetica" written by Prof. Glenn and a transcription of both the apolegitica and the exam.
  • Portrait Presentation Program and Remarks of Thomas B. Gay On the Occasion of the Presentation of the Portrait of Garrard Glenn to the Law School of the University of Virginia May 2, 1947. [File transferred from RG 400 Faculty vertical files in July of 2013].
  • Addresses from Virginia State Association Reports: John Wood Fishburne; Censorship at Common Law and Under Modern Dispensation; Edward Coke, and Law Restatement.  [File transferred from RG 400 Faculty vertical files in July of 2013] 
  • Annotated remarks delivered to Legal Institute of Virginia State Bar Association and Virginia Law Schools , John Marshall Hotel, Richmond, VA, Jan. 12-13, 1940. [Gift of Prof. J. Rodney Johnson, T. C. Williams School of Law, Richmond, Va. File transferred from RG 400 Faculty vertical files in July of 2013] 
 

Associated People

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Access There are no restrictions.
Use Restrictions There are no restrictions.
Preferred Citation

The Papers of Garrard Glenn, 1901-1947, MSS 78-1, Box Number, Special Collections, University of Virginia Law Library.
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