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Correspondence files and financial papers. The files include correspondence, contracts, clippings and programs, ledgers and financial accounts, submission books, and calendars and memorandum books. Authors for whom there are extensive files include the following: Truman Capote; Patrick Dennis; John Dos Passos; Lloyd C. Douglas; John Hersey; Alice Tisdale Hobart; Paul Horgan; William Humphrey; Frances Parkinson Keyes; Margaret Mitchell; Alan Paton; Kenneth Roberts; Lillian Smith; John Steinbeck; George R. Stewart; Ben Ames Williams; and Kathleen Winsor

Correspondence and manuscripts of Van Doren, consisting of letters, poems, short stories, novels, plays, radio broadcast transcripts ("Invitation to Learning"), diaries, critical works, proofs, and printed works. Correspondents include Louise Bogan, Philip Booth, Babette Deutsch, Richard Eberhart, T.S. Eliot, John Gould Fletcher, Herbert Gorman, E.W. Howe, Robinson Jeffers, Archibald MacLeish, Louis MacNeice, Edgar Lee Masters, Lewis Mumford, Hyam Plutzik, Allen Tate, and Louis Zukovsky. Also, extensive correspondence with Robert Lax and Thomas Merton, as well as manuscripts by these two authors.

Correspondence, playscripts, screenplays, scenarios, short stories, and other manuscripts, drafts, photocopies, contracts and other documents, tearsheets, clippings, and other materials relating to his career as a screenwriter, playwright, and author of short stories. Correspondence with friends, students, admirers, and professional colleagues concern his teaching, playwriting, films, articles, photography, and literary topics. There are also two groups of letters from students and readers about his textbook, "The Human Nature of Playwriting" (1949). Among the cataloged correspondence are William Gibson, MacKinlay Kantor, Anna Louise Strong, Louis Untermeyer, and Carl Van Doren. Included are manuscripts, drafts, or photocopies of almost all his films, plays, and short stories, such as playscripts and drafts of his plays, "The Jazz Singer" (1922), "Skylark" (1939), "Jason" (1942), and others; screenplays and scenarios, many in photocopy, of "Trouble in Paradise" (1932), "The Merry Widow" (1934), "The Shop Aroung the Corner" (1940), "Suspicion" (1941), "Heaven Can Wait" (1943), and many other films; and manuscripts, drafts, tearsheets, and printed copies of his short stories and articles of film and television criticism. There are also many clippings and reviews, programs, and other printed materials about his plays and films.

The collection consists of the editorial and production archives of Vanguard Press: correspondence, manuscripts, contracts, memoranda, galley proofs, photographs, clippings, and printed materials. The correspondence and editorial files contain a wealth of detailed information about individual authors and the growth and development of the Press. Among the cataloged correspondents are: Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Stephen Vincent Benét, William Rose Benét; Phyllis Bottome; Pierre Boulle; Jocelyn Brooke; Cyril Connolly; A.J. Cronin; Nigel Dennis; John Dewey; Max Eastman; James T. Farrell; Vardis Fisher; Richard Garnett; Theodor Seuss Geisel; Louis Golding; Paul Goodman; Horace Gregory; Geoffrey Grigson; Lillian Hellman; William Heyen; Harold L. Ickes; Christopher Isherwood; Alfred Kazin; Philip Lamantia; Sinclair Lewis; Emanuel Litvinoff; Dwight Macdonald; Archibald MacLeish; Marshall McLuhan; Thomas Mann; Edgar Lee Masters; H. L. Mencken; William Meredith; Joyce Carol Oates; Katherine Anne Porter; Barbara Pym; William Sansom; William Saroyan; Ramon J. Sender; Upton Sinclair; Rex Stout; Edith Sitwell; Paul Theroux; Lionel Trilling; Harry S. Trumam; Louis Untermeyer; Eudora Welty; Richard Wilbur; and Thornton Wilder. There are some manuscripts by Bellow; Bottome; Boulle; Farrell; Grigson; Litvinoff; MacDonald; Oates; John Cowper Powys; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.; Patrick Tanner; William Targ; Theroux; and Sitwell.

Correspondence, manuscripts, notes, memoranda, notebooks, notecards, proofs, photographs, microfilms, and printed materials. The Papers include the manuscript research materials and correspondence for each of his books except his biography of Theodore Dreiser. Among the correspondents are William Benton, Bruce Catton, Carey McWilliams, Mrs. Fremont Older (Cora Miranda Baggerly Older), and Thornton Wilder.