Peter Neumeyer Papers, 1947-2004

Special Collections is pleased to announce that the Peter Neumeyer Papers are processed and available for research. Neumeyer came to San Diego State University in 1978 and retired in 1993. At SDSU, Neumeyer developed in the English Department what has become the largest Children's Literature program in North America. Neumeyer has published extensively on children's literature topics, especially E.B. White, including The Annotated Charlotte's Web.

Outside of academia, Neumeyer collaborated with illustrator and friend Edward Gorey on several beloved children's stories, including Donald Has a Difficulty. He is also a poet, and has published numerous poems in literary journals. After retirement from SDSU, Neumeyer has reviewed children's books for various publications including Prodigy, Mothering Magazine, Parent's Choice, San Diego Home and Garden, and the Los Angeles Times. In 2005, he received the Children's Literature Association's Anne Deveraux Jordan Award for his contributions to the field.

The Peter F. Neumeyer Papers, processed by intern Frank Sweeney, document Neumeyer's professional and academic career, beginning as a student and ending as a critic. The papers date from 1950, when Neumeyer was an undergraduate, to 2004, when he and wife Helen co-curated an exhibition on illustrator Margot Zemach. The bulk of the papers are from the 1970s through the 1990s when Neumeyer was a professor and actively published academic articles, reviews, and poetry. The collection is divided into four series: Pedagogical Work, Professional Files, Published Work, and Margot Zemach Art Show.

Of special note is the Pedagogical Work series, which dates from 1947-1992. The series documents Neumeyer's career as both student and educator, as well as his role in developing the Children's Literature Program at SDSU, with the bulk of the series consisting of lecture notes, children’s literature course readers, quizzes and assignments, and class handouts. These materials date back to Neumeyer’s time at Harvard, but are predominantly from courses he taught at San Diego State. One of the most significant documents in this series is a semester project from Neumeyer’s seminar in Children’s Literature at Harvard in 1966 (cover shown here). This project was an early attempt to approach children’s books from a literary—in this case structuralist—approach. This series offers an invaluable look at the progression of children’s literature as an academic subject as taught by one of its prominent scholars.