The first duty of the Library of Congress is to serve the Congress and the officers and agencies of goverment. Its second duty is to serve the world of scholarship and letters. Through both it endeavors to serve the American people to whom it belongs and for whom it exists.Statement of Archibald MacLeish
Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions, Inaugural issue 1943. Archibald MacLeish, poet, dramatist, and ninth Librarian of Congress, was born on May 7, 1892, in Glencoe, Illinois. He attended Yale University where he chaired the Yale Literary Monthly. After service in World War I, he graduated from Harvard Law School. MacLeish practiced law for three years before resigning and moving his family to Paris.
Like American expatriates Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, MacLeish found Paris of the 1920s a creative haven. He produced several volumes of poetry during his years in France including The Happy Marriage (1924), The Pot of Earth (1925), and Streets on the Moon (1926).
In the early 1930s, MacLeish returned to the United States to research and write his epic poem Conquistador. This long narrative work about the Spanish conquest of Mexico received the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. The social awareness manifest in Conquistador continued to inform his work.
MacLeish's combined interests in literature and public policy led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to appoint him Librarian of Congress in 1939.
The Library of Congress' John Adams Building, originally called the "Annex," had been completed only a few months before MacLeish's appointment. MacLeish commissioned artist Ezra Winter to decorated the Jefferson Reading Room in the new building with four murals inspired by Thomas Jefferson's thoughts on freedom, labor, the "living generation," education, and democratic government.
Macleish faced the challenge of moving collections and of updating the administrative structure of the institution to fulfill its mission to Congress, to the American government, to scholarship, and to the American people. During his tenure as Librarian, MacLeish successfully reorganized the Library and extended the Library's connections to American writers and scholars.
Equally important, MacLeish mobilized the Library of Congress for war. Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, American treasures, including Thomas Jefferson's rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, were transported to Fort Knox for safekeeping. Other irreplaceable works were deposited in libraries around the nation. Made available on around-the-clock, the Library's collections proved a valuable resource for U.S. military intelligence.
After five years at the helm, MacLeish left the Library of Congress to become assistant secretary of state. During the 1950s, MacLeish published additional poetic works and the well-known J.B.: A Play in Verse. Based on the biblical story of Job, this successfully-staged play won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for drama. Archibald MacLeish died in 1982.
- Search the Today in History Archive on writer, playwright or poet to find more features on literary lights of America, including William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway
- Search the Today in History Archive on such terms as Franklin Roosevelt, Great Depression, and World War II to read more about the era of MacLeish's tenure as Librarian of Congress and Assistant Secretary of State.
- Read more about the illustrious Librarians of Congress in John Cole's history of the Library, Jefferson's Legacy: A Brief History of the Library of Congress.
- Examine a letter from Ernest Hemingway to Archibald MacLeish. Written in August 1943, Hemingway answers an earlier letter concerning poet Ezra Pound's mental health. This document is available in the collection Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division's First 100 Years.
- Enjoy Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem project--an audio and video archive of Americans reciting their favorite poems. A part of the Library of Congress Bicentennial celebration, tapes created for this program will become a permanent part of the Library's Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature.
