This is a study whose main sources are archival, principally Edgar J.
Goodspeed's "Student Travel Letters" from 1899-1900. These letters home
recount Goodspeed's daily and sometimes hourly activities during nearly
two years abroad, in continental Europe, England, Egypt, and the Holy
Land, in pursuit of scholarly seasoning. The book's focus is on his
engagement with the newly emergent field of papyrology-the decipherment
and study of the ancient Greek manuscripts then being discovered in
Egypt. The letters allow for a tracking of this engagement in far
greater depth than that allotted in his 1953 autobiography, As I
Remember, or in his 90-page unpublished memoir, "Abroad in the
Nineties," filling in some apparently intentional gaps, casting doubt on
some of his later self-assessments but putting much additional substance
to the claim that he was indeed "America's First Papyrologist." The
result, part biography, part travelogue, part diary, part academic
history, is a description of Goodspeed's progress, beginning with his
enthusiastic commitment to the fledgling field in the late 1890s, ending
with his abandonment of it in the early 1900s, possibly a result of his
complicated dealings with Oxford papyrologist Bernard P. Grenfell in the
fateful summer of 1900. Along the way the book introduces the reader to
the world of papyrology in its early days, but it is mainly an account
of one budding scholar's experiences in pursuit of recognition in that
subject, a story that has its own complications, narrative arc, and
human interest.
