Lawrence Gustave Desmond papers relating to Augustus and Alice Dixon Le
Plongeon
Dates:
1978-2009, undated
Number:
2013.M.12
Creator/Collector:
Desmond, Lawrence Gustave,
1935-
Extent:
17.66 Linear Feet
(29 boxes)
Abstract:
The Lawrence Gustave Desmond papers
represent over 30 years of exhaustive research and writing by Lawrence Desmond on the lives
and work of Mesoamerican archaeologists Augustus and Alice Dixon Le Plongeon, who lived and
traveled throughout Yucatán, Mexico, and Central America from 1873 to 1886, and were the
first to systematically excavate and photograph the Maya sites of Chichén Itzá and Uxmal.
Desmond's interest in the husband and wife team began during his graduate studies and they
are the subject of his PhD dissertation and two books, A Dream of
Maya: Augustus and Alice Le Plongeon in Nineteenth-century Yucatán with Phyllis
Messenger (1988) and Yucatán through Her Eyes: Alice Dixon Le
Plongeon, Writer & Expeditionary Photographer (2009). Included in the
collection are research materials and correspondence assembled by Desmond over the course of
his study of the Le Plongeons along with the drafts and manuscripts for his resulting
publications. Inventories of the major holdings of original Le Plongeon photographs in the
United States, and of the Dixon family in England, as well as copy photographs of those
holdings, are also included.
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Language:
Collection material is in English with some Spanish; Castilian.
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute Special Collections 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100 Los Angeles 90049-1688 reference@getty.edu URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref (310) 440-7390
