Collections by Subject: British 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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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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Thom Gunn papers, 1951-1983. 2.75 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Thom Gunn (b. 1929) is a British poet who has lived in the United States since 1954. He has published over thirty books of poetry, a collection of essays, and four edited collections. His work is extensively represented in literary anthologies. Gunn combines an interest in traditional poetics with less traditional subjects, such as Hell's Angels, LSD, and homosexuality. The collection includes drafts, notebooks, publications, correspondence, and photographs. The bulk of the collection includes materials from his books Positives (1966) and Touch (1967).
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Papers of Edward Lucie-Smith, 1963-1975. 5.75 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Edward Lucie-Smith (b. 1933) is a critic, poet, free-lance journalist, and editor. He was a partner in Turret Books, a small private press in London. His most important publications are Towards Silence, Thinking About Art, Movements in Art Since 1945, Concise History of French Painting: From 1930 to the Present, World of the Makers: Today's Master Craftsmen and Women, and Art in Britain, 1969-70. The collection consists of correspondence, manuscripts, notes, essays, articles, and poetry broadsides representing the literary and business interests and production of Lucie-Smith. Significant correspondents represented in the collection include Turret Books, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Peter Quennell, Adrian Henri, and the Arts Council of Great Britain.
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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; proofs for Ladies Almanack and Creatures in an Alphabet by Djuna Barnes; a manuscript for a biography of Djuna Barnes; ephemera; and photographs. The collection is unprocessed, but a preliminary inventory is available.
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Papers of Hope Mirrlees, 1920-1960. 0.25 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Hope Mirrlees (1887-1978) was an author of novels, poems, and translations. However, she is most remembered for her circle of literary friends, which included T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Lady Ottoline Morrell. She published two novels, Lud-in-the-Mist and Counterplot, and a book of poetry, Moods and Tensions: Poems. She began, but never completed, a biography of seventeenth-century British antiquarian Sir Robert Bruce Cotton; part of this was published as A Fly in Amber in 1962. With Jane Harrison, she produced two translations of Russian literature, The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum by Himself and The Book of the Bear. Her papers consist solely of correspondence; significant correspondents include T. S. Eliot, Ottoline Morrell, Virginia Woolf, and Leonard Woolf.
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Papers of Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1916-1934. 0.25 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938) was a British-born literary hostess of the World War I era. Her group of friends, including D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forester, T. S. Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, H. G. Wells, Siegfried Sassoon, and Virginia Woolf, was known as the Bloomsbury Group. They often met at one of the Morrell homes at Bedford Square, Gower Street, or the country home at Garsington. The collection includes correspondence and publications documenting Lady Morrell's literary interests. Significant correspondents include Siegfried Sassoon and Virginia Woolf.
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Archives of the Poetry Book Society, 1962-1970. 0.25 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
The Poetry Book Society was founded in 1953 under the auspices of the Arts Council of Great Britain to foster the art of poetry and to promote the work of contemporary poets. It continued to operate as recently as 2005. The first directors included B. H. Blackwell, Joseph Compton, R. N. David, T. S. Eliot, Sir George Rostrevor Hamilton, and Erica Marx. Eric W. White became the Society's first secretary. The society mails subscribers a book of poetry quarterly, accompanied by a Bulletin containing a contribution from the selected poet of the quarter. The collection includes correspondence, manuscripts, proofs and issues of the Society's Bulletin, and files relating to various poets. Among the significant figures represented are Barry Cole, Martin Dodsworth, Douglas Dunn, John Fuller, Geoffrey Grigson, Thom Gunn, Thomas Kinsella, Seamus Heaney, David Holbrook, and Charles Osborne.
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Archives of Turret Books, 1965-1975. 8.25 linear feet.
Location: Literary Manuscripts
Turret Books is a small press located in London, England, that specializes in publishing a series of booklets in limited editions. It published as recently as 1992. Records of the press consist of correspondence, publications, poetry manuscripts, proofs for publication, posters, newspaper clippings, financial records, and artwork documenting the operation and output of Turret Books. Significant figures represented in the collection include Barry Cole, Lawrence Durrell, Edward Lucie-Smith, Allen Ginsberg, George MacBeth, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, Bernard Stone, Georg Rapp, Christopher Logue, and Jonathan Williams. An addendum, consisting of audio tapes, is unprocessed but is described in a preliminary inventory.