Collections by Subject: American Literary Figures
A Selected List of Holdings in the Archives and Manuscripts Department, University of Maryland Libraries
For more information about how to access materials in this guide, please visit the Maryland Room web page or fill out an information request.
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Authors and Poets, null. 7.25 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
The Authors and Poets Collection also contains material by or relating to Conrad Aiken, Louis Auchincloss, Amiri Baraka, Saul Bellow, James M. Cain, Malcolm Cowley, Hart Crane, Robert Creeley, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, William Goyen, H. L. Mencken, Marianne Moore, Ogden Nash, the North American Review, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, John Updike, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Richard Wilbur, William Carlos Williams, and Edmund Wilson.
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Dryad Press Records, 1966-2009. 19.75 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Dryad Press had its origins in Dryad magazine, a literary journal co-founded by Merrill Leffler and Neil Lehrman in 1967 in the Washington, D.C., area. In 1974, the press published the first book bearing its imprint and has since published over fifty works, primarily volumes of poetry, which often have Jewish themes or subjects. Many of the authors published by Dryad are associated with the state of Maryland, by birth, education, or current residence. Much of the collection consists of correspondence with authors as well as with individuals and institutions involved in the publication and promotion of literary works. Major correspondents include Rod Jellema, Neil Lehrman, Myra Sklarew, and Paul Zimmer. Additionally, the collection includes manuscripts, proofs, printers' specifications, mock-ups, paste-ups, bluelines, galleys, and typescripts; photographs, slides, and negatives; reviews, articles, and clippings; brochures, flyers, and posters; financial statements, bills, invoices, receipts, and address lists; as well as copies of the actual publications of the press.
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T. S. Eliot Collection, 1914-1973. 1.00 linear foot.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965), a poet, critic, editor, and playwright, was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He received a B. A. in 1909 and an M. A. in 1910 from Harvard, where he also pursued a doctoral degree in philosophy. In 1915, he married Vivienne (Vivien) Haigh-Wood. He was literary editor of the avant-garde magazine The Egoist. In the Spring 1917, he published his first book of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations. In 1922, Eliot published "The Waste Land" and became editor of The Criterion. 1927 was a momentous year for Eliot. In June, he was baptized into the Church of England, and, in November, became a British citizen. His religion then became a central component of his life and his poetry reflected this religious conversion. In 1948, Eliot received both the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature. The collection includes correspondence; manuscripts and proofs of published Eliot literary works such as "Lines to a Persian Cat," "In silent corridors of death," and "The Love-Song of J. Arthur Prufrock;" galley proofs for plays and collections of poetry; manuscripts of Vivienne (Haigh-Wood) Eliot; serial publications with contributions by Eliot; newspaper clippings; a proof of a literary review of Eliot; manuscripts written by other individuals; programs and playbills.
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Roland Flint papers, 1930s-2003. 36.5 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
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Jesse Glass papers, 1836-2009. 61 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Jesse Glass, Jr., (1954- ), a writer, artist, and editor, is Professor of American literature and history and of comparative literature at Meikai University in Chiba, Japan. Raised outside Westminster, Maryland, he holds degrees from Western Maryland College (B.A., 1979), Johns Hopkins University (M.A., 1980), and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Ph.D., 1988). He was closely associated with avant-garde periodicals, Goethe's Notes (1976-1980), Cream City Review(1982-1988), and Die Young (1991-1996). After moving to Japan in 1992, he became involved with the Abiko Quarterly. In 1998 he established Ahadada Books, which publishes both online and in print. Published works of his poetry include The Passion of Phineas Gage & Selected Poems (2006), The Life and Death of Peter Stubbe (1995) and Lexical Obelisk (1983, 1990, 1996). He has also written on the history and folklore of Carroll County, Maryland, in The Witness: Slavery in 19th century Carroll County, Maryland (2004), Carroll County Newspaper Wars: Know-Nothings, Alms House Scandals and the Death of a Civil-War Editor (2004), and Ghosts and Legends of Carroll County (1982; revised, 1998). His papers include correspondence with such notable poets as Cid Corman, Leo Connellan, Robert Peters, Rod Summers, David Ray, and Armand Schwerner. Also in the collection are photographs, artwork, clippings, background material for books, visual and sound poetry, monographs, serials, chapbooks, manuscripts and poetry publications documenting the careers of Glass and of others. The collection includes both English and Japanese language materials and documents Glass's interest in Japanese poetry and folklore.
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Albert Gross papers, 1924-1946. 4.75 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Albert H. (Pete) Gross (1895-1948) worked in publishing for more than two decades. His collection consists primarily of correspondence and manuscripts he accumulated during his tenure at Boni and Liveright, Inc.; Horace Liveright, Inc.; A. and S. Lyons, Inc.; and Coward-McCann, Inc. Manuscripts and correspondence relating to Thomas Mann's "Letter to the Civilized World: A Manifest" are particularly notable, as are other manuscripts and galley proofs, such as those for Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time. The collection also contains correspondence from such literary figures as Sholem Asch, Sherwood Anderson, Gertrude Atherton, Theodore Dreiser, Robinson Jeffers, and Eugene O'Neill.
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Arthur J. Gutman
Collection of Menckeniana, 1882-2006. 7.75 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Arthur J. Gutman was born in 1911. A native Baltimorean, he graduated from Baltimore City College High School in 1928 and then attended the University of Baltimore. From 1979-1999, Mr. Gutman held the position of president of the Mencken Society, an organization founded to encourage the reading of and to pursue research into the writings of Henry L. Mencken. The Arthur J. Gutman collection contains books, clippings, letters, manuscripts, newsletters, pamphlets, and photographs related to both H.L. Mencken and to the Mencken Society. A large portion of the collection consists of first editions of H.L. Mencken's works as well as a number of the most significant secondary works on the writer. The collection contains a considerable amount of correspondence between Gutman and noted Mencken scholars, manuscripts of works on Mencken, and a nearly complete series of Mencken Society newsletters. There are also a number of rare pieces of Mencken's writing that appeared in pamphlet form, as well as some original Mencken correspondence. The entire collection spans the period from 1906-2000 with the majority of the materials falling between 1979-1999.
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Ernest Hemingway
Collection, 1916-1977. 29.25 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
The Ernest Hemingway Collection was purchased in the early 1970s from C. E. Frazer Clark, Jr., and various other sources. C. E. Frazer Clark, Jr. (1925-2001), a marketing executive, began amassing a Hemingway collection in the 1960s. In the 1970s, Clark sold the bulk of his Hemingway collection to the University of Maryland. The Ernest Hemingway Collection contains serials, correspondence, manuscripts, scripts, proofs, and clippings. A large portion of the collection consists of serials that include stories and nonfiction written by and about Hemingway. It also includes some original correspondence to and from Hemingway. In addition, there are manuscripts and proofs of Hemingways work and biographies of Hemingway. This collection also includes press releases, posters and other materials relating to movie adaptations of Hemingways works. The collection spans the period from 1916 to 1977, with the majority of the materials falling between 1922 and 1961.
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Papers of Laura Riding Jackson, 1938-1966. 0.75 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Laura Riding Jackson (1901-1991) was an American poet, critic, and editor. She was closely associated with the Fugitive group, a cluster of American Southern writers centered at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, which included John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren. She had a long partnership with Robert Graves; together they co-founded the Seizin Press, published several volumes of poetry, and co-edited the literary journal Epilogue. Jackson is generally acknowledged to have influenced the work of Graves, the New Zealand filmmaker Len Lye, and the writers James Reeves, Norman Cameron, T. S. Matthews, Jacob Bronowski, and W. H. Auden. The collection consists of correspondence between Jackson and Robert Nye, a British author, editor, and playwright, as well as manuscripts, newspaper and magazine clippings, and photographs. Subjects discussed include writers and writings, Martin Seymour-Smith, Robert Graves, and Nye.
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Frances McCullough
papers, 1915-1994. 18 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Frances Monson McCullough (1938- ), editor and cookbook author, was born in Quantico, Virginia. She graduated from Stanford University in 1960 with a B. A. and completed post-graduate work at Brandeis University in 1960-1961. She began her career as an editor at Harper & Row in 1963, moved to Dial Press in 1980, and on to Bantam Books in 1986. She has worked with authors and poets including Djuna Barnes, Ted Hughes, Laura (Riding) Jackson, N. Scott Momaday, William DeWitt Snodgrass, and Robert Bly. This collection spans the years 1915-1994 and includes correspondence; manuscripts and proofs for The Telling by Laura (Riding) Jackson; Gaudete The Death of a Changeling by Ted Hughes; Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, the Journals of Sylvia Plath, and Letters Home by Sylvia Plath; Sleepers Joining Hands by Robert Bly; Selected Poems by William DeWitt Snodgrass; and House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday; artwork by N. Scott Momaday; and photographs. The collection is unprocessed, but a preliminary inventory is available.
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Ferdinand Reyher
papers, 1868-1996. 26.25 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Ferdinand Reyher (1891-1967) was a novelist, newspaper correspondent, screenwriter, and playwright active in and among many influential artistic, cultural, and social spheres of the twentieth century. The papers document Reyher's literary activities and personal life. The collection includes correspondence; manuscripts; Reyher's notes and research; clippings; legal and financial documents; and other personal material, including diaries, photographs, and drawings. Throughout his writing career, Ferdinand Reyher wrote short fiction and articles for many magazines. Reyher was active in Hollywood during the 1930s and early 1940s as a film doctor and screenwriter at several studios, including RKO, MGM, and Paramount. Ferdinand Reyher was among those who helped to extricate German playwright, poet, and dramatic theorist Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and his family from Nazi Germany in 1941. Reyher and Brecht made attempts to collaborate on various works in the late 1930s to mid-1940s, and he actively promoted the translation and performance of Brecht's work in the United States. Reyher was an acquaintance of many well-known twentieth-century literary figures, prominent photographers, screenwriters and producers of Hollywood's golden era, and artists. Figures represented in the collection include Ford Maddox Ford, Wallace Stevens, Sinclair Lewis, John Huston , and Paul Henreid. Other notable correspondents include journalist George Seldes, publisher John Rodker, and Reyher's first wife, suffragette, political activist, and author, Rebecca Hourwich Reyher. Also represented in Reyher's papers is his second wife, Chinese writer and translator Eileen Chang (1920-1995).
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Papers of Karl Shapiro, ca. 1917-1968. 1.00 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Karl Shapiro (1913-2000) was an American poet and literary critic who was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He was strongly influenced by the works of W. H. Auden, Walt Whitman, and William Carlos Williams. His work has been recognized with a number of major awards, including the Pulitzer prize for V-Letter and Other Poems in 1945; he later became consultant in poetry at the Library of Congress. He also published a novel, an autobiography, and poetry anthologies. Shapiro taught at many universities, including Johns Hopkins University, University of Nebraska, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, and University of California, Davis. His papers consist of correspondence, manuscripts of poems, and photographs and are mostly from 1941 to 1944.
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Myra Sklarew papers, 1858-2008. 15 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
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Papers of Gertrude Stein and Her Circle, 1927-1938. 0.50 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American-born poet, novelist, and playwright who lived for a time in Baltimore, Maryland, but spent most of her life in France and England. The collection consists of correspondence, biographical materials, work papers, and photographs and is mostly in French. Significant figures represented include Georges Hugnet, Georges Maratier, Jacques Stettiner, John Boulton, Bernard Fry, and Pablo Picasso.
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Reed Whittemore papers, c. 1913-1985. 26 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Reed Whittemore (b. 1919) is a poet and emeritus professor of English at the University of Maryland, where he taught from 1967 to 1984. He also served twice as the Poetry Consultant for the Library of Congress. The author of a major biography of William Carlos Williams, he has also written numerous volumes of poems and essays. Whittemore's papers include correspondence, manuscripts, drafts, notes, galleys, proofs, scrapbooks, diaries, published materials, newspaper and magazine clippings, audiotapes, and photographs documenting his life, literary work, and teaching. Significant correspondents represented in the collection include Arthur Mizener and John Pauker. An addendum to the collection--consisting of correspondence, publications, press releases, and work papers--is available; it is described in a preliminary inventory.