Search

Correspondence, manuscripts, and miscellany relating to the presentation of poems at a Shakespeare's Birthday Concert on 23 April 1972, by a number of British poets including W.H. Auden, C. Day Lewis, Robert Graves, and Stephen Spender. The collection consists primarily of correspondence with the poets involved; several manuscripts of poems both presented at and eliminated from the program; some business correspondence of the Globe Playhouse Trust and Calder and Boyars, Ltd., Publishers; and Hampton's notes.

The files of Curtis Brown, Ltd. literary agency include correspondence with authors, publishers, and other agents and deal with the editing and publishing of trade and textbooks, serial rights, reprints, dramatic rights, translations and foreign rights, promotion and copyright registration. For each author there are contracts, royalty statements, tax statements, and other financial materials. There is also a contract file, including cancellations and related correspondence, from 1914 to 1988. Among the cataloged correspondents are: Louis S. Auchincloss, W.H. Auden, Erle Stanley Gardner, Robert Graves, Ogden Nash, Ayn Rand, and Sloan Wilson.

Correspondence, manuscripts, documents, photographs and printed material of the English poet and critic, Edmund Blunden, documenting his personal and professional activity. Blunden's letters to his second wife, Sylva Norman, and his secretary, Aki Hayashi, are particularly well represented. Also included are many letters addressed to Blunden by eminent literary figures such as John Betjeman, George Orwell, Siegfried Sassoon, Stephen Spender, and Henry Williamson. Other literary correspondents are Adrian Bell, Joyce Cary, Richard Church, C. Day Lewis, Walter de la Mare, Graham Greene, H.D., William Plomer, Kathleen Raine, and Leonard Woolf. A substantial portion of the cataloged correspondence contains drawings, verse fragments and poems by Blunden which have been analyzed. Also present are eleven of Blunden's diaries, 1936-1967, which contain drafts of a number of poems. In addition, the collection contains a small number of autograph manuscripts of Edmund Blunden's literary works.

Correspondence, manuscripts, memoranda, contracts and other legal papers, advertising, and printed materials. The files, 1958-1978, of the Harold Matson Company, Inc. include correspondence with authors, publishers, and other agents and deal with the editing and publishing of American and English books, serial rights, reprints, dramatic rights, translations, foreign rights, promotion, and copyright registration. The contract file of McIntosh, McKee & Dodds, Inc. Literary Representatives is also included.

Correspondence, manuscripts, and documents gathered by Carpenter in writing his W.H. AUDEN: A BIOGRAPHY, including correspondence and recollections of Auden from friends and acquaintances, and the typescript of Carpenter's first draft of the book. Correspondents include Sir Cecil Beaton, Sir Isaiah Berlin, Christopher Isherwood, Sir Peter Pears, Frederick Prokosch, Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, and Stephen Spender.

Manuscripts and correspondence of Schneider, including numerous manuscripts of short stories and poems, many of which are unpublished, and several full-length manuscripts of unpublished critical works. The collection also contains an extensive file of typescript reports on books for The Book Find Club, clippings of reviews written by Schneider and about his books, photographs and drawings of Schneider, and a file of correspondence relating to his writings. The literary correspondence includes letters from many of the important novelists, poets, and literary critics from the 1920s to the 1950s. They include Conrad Aiken, Sherwood Anderson, Kenneth Burke, Malcolm Cowley, Theodore Dreiser, Waldo Frank, Lillian Hellman, Robert Hillyer, Alfred Kreymborg, Thomas Mann, Arthur Miller, Marianne Moore, Lewis Mumford, Laura Riding, Muriel Rukeyser, Karl Shapiro, Stephen Spender, Mark Van Doren, and Yvor Winters.

Correspondence, manuscripts, documents, memorabilia and printed materials. The correspondence deals with literary and political topics, from such people as Hayden Carruth, Irwin Edman, Lola Ridge and Norman Thomas; numerous manuscripts of Mrs. Marshall's writings, including the notes, drafts, manuscripts and proofs of her last novel THE HILL IS LEVEL and various manuscripts of the stories published in THE CONFRONTATION AND OTHER STORIES, and numerous manuscripts of poetry and short stories. Also included is material on the World War II draft of 19-year-olds, economic aid for Western Europe, the Vietnam War, the origin of SANE, the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility, the Amchitka Islands nuclear tests, the Task Force against Nuclear Pollution, and personal correspondence from her own and her husband's families

Letters, manuscripts, and books, including four letters from MacNeice to the poet and editor, Geoffrey Grigson. The manuscripts, either by or about MacNeice, include ten of his last poems. Five of these have been published in SOLSTICE, 1961, and four in THE BURNING PERCH, 1963. Drafts of the first group of poems were written in a personal notebook used by the poet while he worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation. In another similar notebook is a partial draft of his play "The Administrator." Both notebooks are in the collection. Also, an untitled, unpublished poem of seven stanzas"Tingling [born] the burning island" written on the reverse of a map. Works about NacNeice include manuscripts of a memoir and a radio portrait by Robert Pocock. The portrait has poignant comments and personal reminiscences by twenty of the poet's contemporaries, including John Betjeman, Anthony Blunt, W.H. Auden, E.R. Dodds, Stephen Spender, and others. Both Auden and a literary coterie of Spender, Betjeman, William Empson, and Cyril Connoly taped disucssions of MacNeice and his poetry. Also, thirty-eight books that were in MacNeice's personal library. Most are autographed by him, and many have marked passages and marginal notes. One of the books, Euripides' ALCESTIS AND OTHER PLAYS, is heavily annotated, apparently for a broadcast production.