The Unpublished Collection

In 1899 Ellen White's son William, referring to his mother's writings, reported to Adventist educator P. T. Magan, “About four years ago the word came to her [Ellen White], ‘Gather up the fragments, let nothing be lost,’ and this has been repeated many times since.”^{1W. C. White to P. T. Magan, May 23, 1899, cited in Arthur L. White, Ellen G. White: The Australian Years, p. 451.} The Ellen G. White Estate is fortunate to have the many letters and manuscripts of Ellen White that it does, mainly the result of her foresight and diligence in preserving her writings years before receiving that special instruction in 1895. By the time of her death, in addition to her books and published articles, Ellen White left as a part of her literary estate more than 3,000 letters and 5,000 manuscripts—some in untranscribed handwritten form—aggregating approximately 50,000 typewritten pages.1EGWLM 29.1

While the entire collection is commonly referred to as the “manuscript file,” Ellen White specifically referred to her sermons, articles, transcribed interviews, and diaries as “manuscripts,” distinguishing them in her file from “letters,” which were specifically addressed to individuals, churches, or other groups.1EGWLM 29.2

Most of the documents in the file were typed by Ellen White's secretaries from her handwritten drafts. But typewriters (calligraphs) did not come into use by her assistants until 1885. Referring to material that Ellen White was preparing for church leaders in 1882, Arthur L. White wrote: “When these testimonies were written, typewriters and carbon paper had not come into common use. Each document had to be painstakingly copied by hand. If several copies were needed, it was a most forbidding task. The only alternative was to set the matter in type and run off copies on the press.”^{2Arthur L. White, Ellen G. White: The Lonely Years, p. 201.}1EGWLM 29.3

Under these conditions it is not surprising that in the decades preceding the 1880s often the only copy of a letter would be sent to the addressee, and, unless preserved by the recipient, would be lost to posterity. Writing to readers of the Review in 1867, Ellen White referred to “hundreds of letters” and “thousands of pages” of personal testimonies that she had written during the previous two years.^{3Ellen G. White, “Questions and Answers,” Review, Oct. 8, 1867, p. 261.} Less than 20 such documents are extant.1EGWLM 29.4