The Archives of James De Mille : A Guide
Collection Number: MS-2-21Fonds-level description created and electronic version prepared by Laurena Fredette, August 2006
Collection Level Description
Title: James De Mille fonds
Dates: 1834-1942
Extent: 15 cm of textual records. - 6 photographs
Author and educator James De Mille is thought to have been born on 23 August 1833 in Saint John, New Brunswick (some reference sources state 1836). He was the third child born to Loyalists Nathan Smith DeMill, a late convert to the Baptist faith, and Elizabeth Budd. De Mille was educated at the Saint John Grammar School before leaving to attend Horton Academy and Acadia College in Wolfville. Following his Acadia graduation in 1849 De Mille toured Europe and Britain with his brother Elisha from 1850-1851. He then undertook graduate work at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he received a Master of Arts in 1854. In 1858 he married Elizabeth Ann Pryor, the daughter of Dr. John Pryor, Acadia College’s first president.
Following his graduation from Brown, De Mille worked briefly in Cincinnati before returning to Saint John where he and a partner opened a bookstore. The unsuccessful venture lasted from 1856-1860 and left De Mille with a financial debt. In 1860 he began teaching classics at Acadia until 1865 when he began teaching English and history at Dalhousie. De Mille was a popular and entertaining professor, well known for his love of Latin and the outdoors. He remained at Dalhousie until he died of pneumonia in 1880.
De Mille was also a prolific, popular writer in the later nineteenth century who began writing for magazines and journals while studying at Brown. He completed about twenty books, many of which were also published serially in American magazines, like Harper’s, before being published as monographs. His humorous historical romances, adventures, and mysteries often reflected his early travels abroad, as did his first book Martyrs of the Catacombs published in 1864. He also wrote a series of adventure stories for boys set in the Annapolis Valley which drew heavily on his experiences at Horton Academy, a textbook entitled The Elements of Rhetoric, and the spiritually themed poem Behind the Veil, published posthumously.
While De Mille is largely forgotten today, his works were popular and influential during his life and Parker, in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, referred to De Mille’s novel A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder as “the most complex and philosophical nineteenth century Canadian novel” (287).
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Parker, George L.“De Mille, James.”
The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Story, Norah. “De Mille, James.”
The Oxford Companion to Canadian History and Literature. Toronto: Oxford University press, 1967.
Tracy, Minerva. “De Mille, James.”
The Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. 2000. University of Toronto/Universite Laval. 21 June 2006 <http://www.biographi.../ShowBio.asp?BioId=39065&query=de%20AND%20mille>.
Waite, P.B.The Lives of Dalhousie University. Vol. 1. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994. 2 vols.
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Some materials donated by Arthur Burpee in 1983, other accessions were made in 1970 and 1972 with unknown custodial history.
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This fonds consists of materials created and collected by the De Mille family which include scrapbooks and journals, correspondence, business papers, photographs, and manuscripts.
Finding aid available onsite.
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See also the Lawrence Burpee fonds MS-2-175.
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[Identification of item], James De Mille fonds, MS-2-21, Box [box number], Folder [folder number], Dalhousie University Archives and Special Collections, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
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