Inspirations and writing process
One spring day, Dale Carnegie was breakfasting at a hotel in London. He came across a column in the Morning Post newspaper entitled "Men and Memories". On that particular morning and for several mornings following, that column was devoted to Abraham Lincoln—the personal side of his career. Carnegie read those with profound interest, and surprise. He had always been interested in the United States history. Aroused by the articles in the Morning Post, Carnegie went over to the British Museum Library and read a number of Lincoln books; the more he read, the more fascinated he became. Finally he determined to write a book on Lincoln, himself.
Carnegie began the work in Europe, and labored over it for a year there, and then for two years in New York. Finally he tore up all that he had written and tossed it into a waste-basket. He then went to Illinois, to write of Lincoln on the very ground where Lincoln himself had dreamed and toiled. For months he lived among people whose fathers had helped Lincoln survey land, build fences and drive hogs to market. For months he delved among old books, letters, speeches, half-forgotten newspapers and musty court records, trying to understand Lincoln.
Carnegie spent one summer in the little town of Petersburg. He went there because it is only a mile away from the restored village of New Salem, where Lincoln spent the happiest and most formative years of his life. The same white oaks under which Lincoln studied, wrestled and made love were still standing. Every morning Carnegie used to take his typewriter and motor up there from Petersburg, and wrote half of the chapters of his book under those trees. He often used to go alone to the woods along the banks of the Sangamon, on summer nights, realizing that on such nights Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, his first love, had walked over this same ground.
When Carnegie came to writing the chapter dealing with the death of Rutledge, he drove over the country roads to the quiet, secluded spot where she lay buried. It was abandoned and overgrown, so to get near her grave, he had to mow down weeds, brush and vines. Carnegie also wrote many of the chapters in Springfield. Some in the sitting-room of the old home where Lincoln lived, some at the desk where he composed his first inaugural address, and others above the spot where he came to court and quarrel with Mary Todd Lincoln. [1]
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Dale Carnegie was an American writer and lecturer, and the developer of courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. Born into poverty on a farm in Missouri, he was the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), a bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), Lincoln the Unknown (1932), and several other books.
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Ann Mayes Rutledge was allegedly Abraham Lincoln's first love.
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Douglas L. Wilson is the George A. Lawrence Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of English at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he taught from 1961 to 1994. He then was the founding director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Monticello) in Charlottesville, Virginia. In his retirement, he returned to Knox College to found and co-direct the Lincoln Studies Center with his colleague Rodney O. Davis.
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A vocal school, blab school, ABC school or old-time school was a type of children's primary school in some remote, rural places in North America in the 19th century, which became increasingly outdated and obsolete as the century progressed. The school children recited (blabbed) their lessons out loud separately or in chorus with others as a method of learning.
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Abraham Lincoln: A History is an 1890 ten-volume account of the life and times of Abraham Lincoln, written by John Nicolay and John Hay, who were his personal secretaries during the American Civil War.
Charles Leroy Blockson was an American historian, author, bibliophile, and collector of books, historical documents, art, and other materials related to the history and culture of African Americans, continental Africans, and the African diaspora throughout the rest of the world. He curated two university collections related to the study of African-American history and culture: the Charles L. Blockson Collection of African-Americana and the African Diaspora at Pennsylvania State University and the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University.
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Tobia Nicotra was an Italian forger who produced counterfeit works of artists in various disciplines. In 1937, he was described as "the most proficient forger of autographs". He may have produced as many as 600 forgeries before he was caught.
