The Charles E. Marske/Tristan da Cunha Collection supplements the other collections of Tristania housed in the Archives of Saint Louis University. The bulk of the material in the Marske/Tristan Collection dates from around 1975 to 1994, the years when Marske was finishing his dissertation on Tristan social solidarity, working on a project on Tristan social sets with his mentor Peter A. Munch and Roland Hawkes, and curating the Munch/Tristan Collection during its early years in the Archives.



A large portion of the collection consists of adaptations of Munch's Tristan field research that Marske used in writing his dissertation. This data was later incorporated by Marske, Munch, and Hawkes into their work on social sets on Tristan. This material is located in the following series: Charts and Lists; Correspondence (that portion dealing with Marske's dissertation); File Cards and Notes; Papers; and Dissertation Research. Marske's arrangement and publicizing of the Munch/Tristan Collection is reflected in these series: Correspondence (letters exchanged with donors Helene Munch, Samuel P. Eastman, and Jack Cole); Grant Funding, detailing the funds he received to further his work on the collection; and Munch Collection Development, including Marske's collection development proposal, press releases about the collection, and Marske's script for a videocasette tape made from Munch's Tristan films.



The new Tristan material contributed by Marske can be found in these series: Clippings, including book excerpts and articles from the New York Times of the 1920s and 1930s; Newsletters, with many copies of the Tristan da Cunha Newsletter put out by the Tristan da Cunha Association of Great Britain in the 1980s and 1990s; Proposed Tristan Trip, containing a color brochure on the St. Helena Shipping Company and its vessel the R.M.S. St. Helena, which provides one of the very few means of reaching Tristan; and Whaling, with copies of log book entries mentioning Tristan.