Occasional Papers

Rev. Charles F. Donovan, SJ, the first University Historian, was the author of The History of Boston College (1990), a full-length study that traced the history of Boston College from its origins in 1863 as a small liberal arts college to its status in 1990 as a major national university.

In addition to this official history, Fr. Donovan also inaugurated a series of smaller booklets he called "Occasional Papers," which drew upon historical sources to document little-known aspects of Boston College's history. Titles include the following:

Boston College's First Boston Brahmin Friends (1982)
Boston College's Classical Curriculum (1982)
Boston College's Beacon Hill Connection (1982)
Nineteenth Century Boston College: Irish or American? (1982)
The Foster Cadets of Boston College (1983)
Rules of Gentlemanly Conduct (1983)
Boston College's Streets (1983)
Boston College's Move to Chestnut Hill (1983)
Student Enrollment at Boston College in the Nineteenth Century (1984)
Joseph Coolidge Shaw: Boston Yankee, Jesuit (1990)
Boston College's Second Spring (1991)
The Spirit Maketh Alive (Early Protestant View of BC) (1991)
Boston College Remembered: 1891–1900
Debate at Boston College: People, Places, Traditions (1991)
Gasson's Rotunda: Gallery of Art, History, and Religion (1992)
Boston College's Boston Priests (1993)
Fulton of Fulton Hall (1995)
St. Patrick in Gasson Hall (1995)
Rev. Timothy Brosnahan, SJ (1996)
Gerard Manley Hopkins: Original in Hopkins House (1997)
Pioneers at Chestnut Hill: Recollections of the Class of 1917
Boston College and the Lawrence Family (1998)

In 1999, Dr. Thomas H. O’Connor was named to succeed Fr. Donovan as University Historian, and continued to follow the tradition of Occasional Papers with the following titles:

Rev. Charles F. Donovan, SJ, 1912-1998 (2000)
The College and the City: A History of the Boston College Club (2003)

Copies of these Occasional Papers may be found in the Burns Library or accessed online from the Boston College University Libraries Digital Collections.