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Correspondence, manuscripts, memorabilia, photographs, phonograph and tape recordings, and printed files. Included are Cerf's personal correspondence files, 1929-1945, and the diaries and scrapbooks which he maintained from his school days throughout his active career. The diaries, in date-book format, contain terse notes on Cerf's meetings with authors and friends, on his travels and publishing activities; the scrapbooks contain correspondence and photographs, as well as memorabilia and printed items, and were annotated by Cerf and his wife, Phyllis Fraser Cerf Wagner. Also in the collection are manuscripts and proofs for Cerf's books including "The Laugh's on Me""Treasury of Atrocious Puns""The Sound of Laughter""Stories to Make You Feel Better", and "At Random: the Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf", which was edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner and Albert Erskine, 1977. The papers also include condolence letters written at the time of Cerf's death, photographs and photo albums,certificates and awards, and miscellaneous printed material, including Random House and Modern Library catalogues. Among the major correspondents are: Truman Capote, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Edna Ferber, Moss Hart, J. Edgar Hoover, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon B. Johnson, John Lindsay, Joshua Logan, John O'Hara, Jacqueline Onassis, Richard Rodgers, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gertrude Stein, Adlai Stevenson, Harry Truman, and Robert Penn Warren

Writers represented in the correspondence files are Margaret Anderson, Sherwood Anderson, George Antheil, Djuna Barnes, Clive Bell, Malcolm Cowley, E.E. Cummings, John Dos Passos, Ford Madox Ford, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Hughes, Eugene Jolas, Archibald MacLeish, H.L. Mencken, Henry Miller, Adrienne Monnier, Man Ray, Elmer Rice, Jules Romains, Gertrude Stein, John Steinbeck, Allen Tate, Carl Van Vechten, Robert Penn Warren, and Edmund Wilson. Galantiere's best known work as a translator was that of the writings of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and the collection contains in addition to correspondence, twelve manuscripts, all bearing the author's and the translator's corrections. He also wrote extensively on economic subjects and current history, and these files and manuscripts are present in the collection. Galantiere wrote plays in his own name and adapted Jean Anouilh's ANTIGONE for Katharine Cornell in 1946, and there are materials relating to these works.

The collection consists of the editorial and production archives of Random House, Inc. from its founding in 1925 to the 1990s. The correspondence and editorial files include many of the prominent novelists and short story writers from 20th-century American and European literature: Saul Bellow; Erskine Caldwell; Truman Capote; William Faulkner; Sinclair Lewis; André Malraux; Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder. Among the poets there are files for W. H. Auden; Allen Ginsberg; Robinson Jeffers; Robert Lowell; and Stephen Spender. In the area of theater there are files for Maxwell Anderson; Moss Hart; Lillian Hellman; Eugene O'Neill; and Tennessee Williams. Random House transacted business with many fine presses and noted typographers and the archives contain files for Nonesuch Press, Grabhorn Press and Golden Cockerel Press, as wll as for Bruce Rogers, Valenti Angelo, and Edwin, Jane, and Robert Grabhorn.

Correspondence, manuscripts, memoranda, contracts, and other legal documents, account books, royalty statements and other financial records, photographs, printed materials, and card files of the Watkins Loomis, Inc. literary agency. The papers deal with editorial, financial, and legal aspects of publishing, magazine, theatrical and film rights, and all other personal and professional activities of their American and English clients. Among these clients have been Michael Arlen, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Carson McCullers, Ezra Pound, Ayn Rand, Dorothy Sayers, Gertrude Stein, and Dylan Thomas.