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Correspondence, outlines and drafts, manuscripts, letters of agreement, contracts, photographs, artwork, and memorabilia. The collection is divided into two parts: the Frederic Dannay papers and the files of ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE (EQMM). The Dannay papers consist of extensive correspondence with most of the notable mystery writers of this century, as well as well-known authors who sometimes wrote in that genre: Isaac Asimov; Lawrence Block; Ray Bradbury; Pearl S Buck; Edgar Rice Burroughs; James M. Cain; Raymond Chandler; Agatha Christie, etc. Most of the novels and short stories written by Dannay and Lee are represented in manuscript form: "The Roman Hat Mystery;" "Ten Day's Wonder;" "Cat of Many Tails;" "The Scarlet Letters;" "The Glass Village;" "The Player on the Other Side;" "And on the Eighth Day" etc. In addition, there are the manuscripts of books edited by Ellery Queen; manuscripts by Ellery Queen Jr.; scripts by Ellery Queen; poetry by Dannay; contracts between Dannay and Lee, as well as between them both as Ellery Queen and numerous parties. There are also manuscripts by such notables as Jorge Luis Borges; Erskine Caldwell; Raymond Chandler; Agatha Christie; Stanley Ellin; William Faulkner; Dashiell Hammett; O Henry; Nigel Morland; Georges Simenon; Muriel Spark; Julian Symons; Roy Vickers; and Cornell Woolrich.

The papers consist of correspondence, manuscripts, documents, and printed materials. Correspondence includes 82 letters from Maksim Kovalevskiĭ to the mathematician Sofii︠a︡ Kovalevskai︠a︡; 69 letters from Petr Lavrov to Kovalevskiĭ; and letters to Kovalevskiĭ from Anton Chekhov (typed copies), Nikolaĭ Mikhaĭlovskiĭ, Pavel Mili︠u︡kov, Petr Struve, and Ivan Turgenev (typed copy). Manuscripts consist of Kovalevskiĭ's handwritten memoirs, with a typed copy and some printed excerpts. Documents consist of Kovalevskiĭ's diplomas from the University of Berlin (1873), the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences (1899), and the Deputazione Veneta di Storia Patria (1901).

Petr Pilśkiĭ's manuscripts include articles which are primarily essays on individual Russian writers of the late 19th and early 20th century, such as Belyĭ, Belinskiĭ, Bunin, Chekhov, Saltykov-Shchedrin etc. These manuscripts, most likely prepared initially to serve as introductions to publications of single or collected works, are typed carbons, apparently copied considerably later. The manuscripts of E.S. Pilśkai︠a︡ are chiefly memoirs, including recollections about her studies at the Imperial Theater School (Imperatorskoe Teatralńoe Uchilishche) in St. Petersburg, theater life in Russia, her stay in Odessa and Kiev during 1918-1919 and about the Soviet takeover of Latvia in 1940. Included in the collection are several articles about Pilśkiĭ by his wife and by A. Kuprin and A. Amfiteatrov.