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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.

Thomas's correspondence with critics and magazine editors concerning her work; and the correspondence of her literary executors with Mark Van Doren about the publication of a posthumous volume of her poetry. Manuscripts and typescripts of her poems; the typescript of the posthumous edition of her poetry, poems rejected by the editors of this book, and their notes; and her prose manuscripts, including her M.A. thesis on the literary and psychological sources of Lawrence Durrell's "The Sonnet of Hamlet;" and the typescript of her anthology of poetry for use in secondary schools.

Correspondence, manuscripts, documents, photographs, art work, audio cassette, printed materials by and about Thomas Merton. The correspondence covers the years from his study at Columbia to his death in Bangkok. Among the cataloged correspondence are: Daniel Berrigan, Mark Van Doren, Luis Somoza, Jacque Maritain, Aldous Huxley, James Laughlin, Robert Lax, Grover Cleveland Smith, John Howard Griffin, William Henry Shannon and Victoria Ocampo. The extensive manuscript collection was assembled primarily by Sister Thérèse Lentfoehr, Mark Van Doren, and Robert Shepherd. Among the more significant manuscripts are: corrected typescript of THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN; fragments of his NOVITIATE JOURNAL; notebooks and journals used in THE SIGN OF JONAS; numerous draft of poems; most of his lecture and conference notes which he used while serving as master of scholastics and, later, master of novices. There is an extensive collection of mimeographed articles, many inscribed to Sister Thérèse Lentfoehr; four watercolors by his father, Owen Merton, and many humorous and devotional drawings by Merton; many photographs of Merton, as well as photographs taken by Merton. There is an audio cassette of the radio play by Bruce Stewart entitled ME AND MY SHADOW, produced by the BBC in 1989. The printed material consists of numerous clippings and some offprints, pamphlets, and books