Moore's Sources
As her notebooks show, Marianne Moore was a voracious reader of a wide variety of texts. Collected here are selected primary sources that Moore quoted in her notebooks. Click the icon in the top right corner of each source's frame to download the file in PDF format.
Poetry Notebooks
Mount Rainier National Park Brochure (Moore's annotated copy)
P. 57: Moore, Marianne. Occasionem Cognosce. Stinehour Press: May 1963. Limited Edition Version.
P. 88: Artz, V. T. “Letters from Book Review Readers.” New York Times (7 May 1916): B197.
P. 128: “Radical from Connecticut.” Time 76.8 (August 22, 1960): 36.
P. 129: Ad for The Travellers Insurance Companies. Newsweek (29 August 1960): 37.
P. 129: Ad for Northern Pacific Railway. Newsweek (29 August 1960): 76.
P. 129: Ad for Santa Fe Railway. Newsweek (29 August 1960): 44.
P. 129: First National City Bank. Newsweek (29 August 1960): 58.
P. 129: Bankers Trust Company. Newsweek (29 August 1960): 1.
P. 130: Ad for Alcoa Aluminum. Newsweek (August 22, 1960): 79.
P. 130: Ad for Pratt & Whitney Aircraft. Newsweek (August 22, 1960): inside back cover.
Reading Notebooks
P. 33: Glover, W. J., Ed. British Fairy and Folk Tales. London: A. & C. Black, 1920.
P. 40: Hurst, S. B. H. Barney. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1923.
P. 42: "To Fellow-Fans." The Outlook 134 (13 June 1923): 163-164.
P. 47: "Governor Smith Burns His Bridges." The Outlook 134 (13 June 1923): 164.
Starting p. 30v: Fraser, Maxwell. “The West Country.” Illustrated London News (21 June 1930): 30.
Starting p. 55r: “The Road to Culture.” The Literary Digest (14 March 1931): 16-17.
Staring p. 119v: Eisenstein, Sergei M. “An American Tragedy.” Close-Up (June 1933): 109-124.
Miscellaneous Notebooks
P. 21r: "Pool Diving Entertains High Society" (1932).
Sources for 07.04.04 (1922-1930)
Mount Rainier National Park Brochure (Moore's annotated copy)
Marianne Moore and her mother travelled to the state of Washington to visit her brother Warner in both 1922 and 1923. In July of 1922, she spent two days on Mount Rainier and hiked with her brother to the Nisqually Glacier. These trips to the Northwest, and in particular her time on Mount Rainier, become the basis for her poem, “An Octopus.” This national park brochure of the “Rules and Regulations: Mount Rainier” (1922) is among her several sources for the poem, and of particular interest because it contains extensive marginalia showing Moore at work on her poem—including places where she uses cross-outs and interlineation to rewrite sentences of the brochure.
Sources for 07.04.05 (1960-1969)
P. 57: Moore, Marianne. Occasionem Cognosce. Stinehour Press: May 1963. Limited Edition Version.
P. 88: Artz, V. T. “Letters from Book Review Readers.” New York Times (7 May 1916): B197.
P. 128: “Radical from Connecticut.” Time 76.8 (August 22, 1960): 36.
P. 129: Ad for The Travellers Insurance Companies. Newsweek (29 August 1960): 37.
P. 129: Ad for Northern Pacific Railway. Newsweek (29 August 1960): 76.
P. 129: Ad for Santa Fe Railway. Newsweek (29 August 1960): 44.
P. 129: First National City Bank. Newsweek (29 August 1960): 58.
P. 129: Bankers Trust Company. Newsweek (29 August 1960): 1.
P. 130: Ad for Alcoa Aluminum. Newsweek (August 22, 1960): 79.
P. 130: Ad for Pratt & Whitney Aircraft. Newsweek (August 22, 1960): inside back cover.
Sources for 07.01.04 (1923)
P. 33: Glover, W. J., Ed. British Fairy and Folk Tales. London: A. & C. Black, 1920. (click on title for link to source)
P. 36: Hunt, Leigh. An Answer To The Question 'What Is Poetry?' Including Remarks On Versification, edited by Albert S. Cook. Boston: Ginn & Co., 1893. (click on title for link to source)
P. 40: Hurst, S. B. H. Barney. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1923. (click on title for link to source)
P. 40: Ad. for the Seltzer bookstore in the Dial 74.6, June 1923: vii. MM quotes from two reviews in the Seltzer ad, of D. H. Lawrence's The Captain's Doll (1923) and Ivan A. Bunin's The Gentleman From San Francisco, translated by Lawrence (1922). (click on title for link to source)
P. 42: "To Fellow-Fans." The Outlook 134 (13 June 1923): 163-164. (click on title for link to source)
P. 44: Ridgway, Gertrude M. "The Book Table: The Tercentenary of The First Folio Shakespeare." The Outlook 134 (13 June 1923): 188-190. (click on title for link to source)
P. 47: "Governor Smith Burns His Bridges." The Outlook 134 (13 June 1923): 164. (click on title for link to source)
P. 48: Traherne, Thomas. The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne: 1936?-1974 From The Original Manuscripts. Edited by Bertram Dobell. London: Bertram Dobell, 1906. (click on title for link to source)
Sources for 07.02.02 (1930-1943)
An edition of 1930-1943 Reading Notebook (07.02.02) will go online later in 2021.
Starting p. 30v: Fraser, Maxwell. “The West Country.” Illustrated London News (21 June 1930): 30.
Starting p. 55r: “The Road to Culture.” The Literary Digest (14 March 1931): 16-17.
Staring p. 119v: Eisenstein, Sergei M. “An American Tragedy.” Close-Up (June 1933): 109-124.
Sources for 07.03.11 (1929-1940)
P. 21r: "Pool Diving Entertains High Society" (1932).