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This archive consists of manuscripts, business files, production materials, and correspondence from 1966 -2012. The journal Hanging Loose was first published in 1966 was preceded by the journal Things, begun by two Columbia College students Emmet Jarrett and Ron Schreiber, Hanging Loose Press founders. The most recent issue #101 was published in 2013. The press has also published books, mostly poetry. The selection process is collective and inclusive. Hanging Loose publishes high school students and has dedicated issues to literature written by prison inmates. HL published Hettie Jones, long-time Columbia-affiliated poet Paul Violi, Jack Agueros, Sherman Alexie, and Charles North, as well as many of the collective members. Denise Levertov is a former board member.

The collection contains correspondence with the authors, including contracts signed with authors as well as negotiations with the authors over various aspects of publishing their works; financial records documenting many aspects of the operation of Harper & Brothers, including royalties paid to authors, records of stock offerings and company reorganizations, and general ledgers which contain daily notes on all aspects of the operation of the business; book catalogues and trade lists; research materials collected by Eugene Exman for his history of Harper & Brothers; visual materials, from drawings and photographs of Harper's authors to colophon designs and an oil painting of the original Harper's building.

Correspondence, manuscript music scores, copies of scores, playscripts, scenarios, watercolor drawings and other stage designs, contracts, legal papers, programs, clippings and other printed materials, microfilms, records, tape recordings, and photographs. Among Moross's work are the musical play, "The Golden Apple"(1954), dance music for "Ballet Ballads"(1945) and for "Frankie and Johnny"(1938), the film score for "The Big Country"(1958) and for "The Cardinal"(1963), and his Symphony No. 1 (1943). There are some financial papers and production records for the staging of his works. Among the cataloged correspondents are Aaron Copland, Agnes George De Mille, Ned Rorem, Virgil Thomson, and Thornton Wilder.

138 original scenic, costume, and prop designs, executed variously in watercolor, gouache, pastel, ink, colored pencil, and graphite pencil for the Stratford Shakespearean Festival or Canada, as well as some related items. Some of the designs have attached fabric swatches. The bulk of the work is designs for Shakespearean plays, but there are also designs for other works such as "The Man of La Mancha" and Gogol's "The Government Inspector.".

The collection consists of several sub-divisions, such as bookplates with a printed date (over 300 bookplates, 1587-1800), ecclesiastical bookplates of the 17th and 18th centuries, and a large group relating to Cambridge and Oxford Universities (mostly 18th century). Well represented are bookplates of libraries, starting with a German bookplate, ca. 1580. Among the library bookplates of some significance are large dated German bookplates of the Royal Library, Munich, the earliest being dated 1614, the bookplate of the medical library, Frankfort, 1676, representing the view of a 17th century library, and a large collection of early American library bookplates.