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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The First World War had been over for two years. In the League of Nations atmosphere following its close, world scholarship had begun to mobilize. In 1918 the Modern Humanities Research Association had been founded. In 1919 the International Research Council, the International Astronomical Union, the International Chemistry Union, and the International Union of Academies had all been organized, and similar bodies were being founded each succeeding year. In these international bodies, American scholars were ill at ease. The war had convinced Great Britain and Europe of the material achievements of the United States, but American scholars, many of them trained abroad, felt keenly that their nation did not stand so high in the fields of international scholarship. One of the first actions of the MHRA had been to send representatives across the Atlantic to meet with MLA members, out of which discussion grew the MLA annual bibliography (1921), intended to display American literary and linguistic scholarship to European scholars. The American Council of Learned Societies, founded in 1919 to make possible American participation in the International Union of Academies, had immediately addressed itself to fostering American scholarly projects that would earn respect abroad.
1 See PMLA, LXVI, iii (1951), xi–xii.
2 William R. Parker, “The MLA, 1883–1953,” PMLA, lxvii, iv, pt. 2 (1953), 33–34.
3 Manly's first list did not include American literature. When Killis Campbell called attention to the omission, Manly asked whether enough people were interested in the subject to justify creating a group. Campbell assured him that there were, and Manly added the AL group to his list.
4 In 1927 the Association's official statement of purpose was changed from “the advancement of the study of the modern languages and literatures” to “the advancement of research” in these fields. Not until 1951 was the statement of purpose revised. See “The MLA, 1883–1953,” pp. 36, 38.
5 For a fuller account see G. R. Coffman's history of the founding, Speculum, i (1926), 5–18, and his presidential address, Speculum, xxii (1947), 446–457.
6 Additional information about the history and recent status of those of the bibliographies that appear in print may be found in “Serial Bibliographies in the Modern Languages and Literatures,” PMLA, LXVI (April 1951), 138–156.
7 See PMLA, XLVIII (June 1933), 623–628.
