Pearl S. Buck Collection, 1932-1956

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Series I: Manuscripts by Pearl S. Buck, 1932-1956

This series is comprised of manuscripts for short stories, plays, essays, and speeches by Pearl S. Buck on a broad range of topics. Writings within the collection emphasize the need for global cross-cultural understanding in order to achieve harmony of the human race. The roles of various groups within the United States to achieve this goal are addressed in Buck's "A Letter to Colored Americans" essay and her speeches both to the New York Urban League and the New York Board of Education. Other items of note include the incomplete manuscript for Buck's biography of her father, Fighting Angel: Portrait of a Soul, which includes corrections and additions in Buck's handwriting, and the unpublished play script inserts and prose manuscript for Flight into China, which Buck later expanded into her novel Peony.



Box 1 Folder 1 "Between These Two", undated


Box 1 Folder 2 "The Big Dance", undated


Box 1 Folder 3 The Big Wave, 1956

(Television drama from her book The Big Wave for the Alcoa Hour on NBC)


Box 1 Folder 4 "The Bullfrog,", undated


Box 1 Folder 5 "Daughters of China", undated


Box 1 Folder 6 "Education for Life for Our World," Speech to Supervisors, Principals and First Assistants of the Board of Education, New York,, January 19, 1944


Box 1 Folder 7 The Empress: A Play in Three Acts, 1937


Box 1 Folder 8 "Fiction and the Front Page", undated

(Published in Yale Review, March 1936)


Box 1 Folder 9 "Fiction Versus Biography", undated


Box 1 Folder 10 "Fighting Angel: Portrait of a Soul", undated


Box 1 Folder 11 "Flight into China", undated


Box 1 Folder 12 Flight into China, undated

(incomplete manuscript, unpublished, produced at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey on September 11, 1939)


Box 1 Folder 13 "Going Home", undated


Box 1 Folder 14 "The Good Deed", undated


Box 1 Folder 15 "Heat Wave", 1935

(published in American Mercury, April 1935)


Box 1 Folder 16 "A Letter to Colored Americans", 1942


Box 1 Folder 17 "The Lovers", undated


Box 1 Folder 18 "Letter Home", undated



Box 2 Folder 1 "Of Men and Measuring Worms", undated


Box 2 Folder 2 "New World for Children", undated


Box 2 Folder 3 "Mrs. Witler's Husband", undated


Box 2 Folder 4 "Morning in Okinawa", undated


Box 2 Folder 5 "The Old Chinese Nurse", 1932

(autobiographical essay published in Fortnightly, June 1932)


Box 2 Folder 6 "Our Last Chance in China", 1944

(published in Common Sense, August 1944)


Box 2 Folder 7 "The Patriot", undated


Box 2 Folder 8 "The Scene in the American Novel", undated


Box 2 Folder 9 "The Sheriff", undated


Box 2 Folder 10 Speech Delivered at the Dinner of the New York Urban League, 1937


Box 2 Folder 11 "The Strawberry Vase", undated


Box 2 Folder 12 "The Three Daughters", undated


Box 2 Folder 13 "True Story U.S.A.", undated


Box 2 Folder 14 "The Wandering Little God", undated

(published in Asia, April 1928)


Box 2 Folder 15 "What the Heart Must", 1937

(published in Woman's Home Companion, September 1937)


Box 2 Folder 16 "What We Can Do About The Children Waiting", undated


Box 2 Folder 17 "The Writing of East Wind: West Wind", undated

(published in Colophon, December 1932)


Box 2 Folder 18 "Youth in China", undated

Series II: Manuscripts by other authors, 1930, 1964, 1977

This series consists of published materials by other authors including an exhaustive bibliography of Buck's work by Lucille S. Zinn of the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace Foundation, Inc.


Box 2 Folder 19 Cody , Lyman V, "An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy", undated


Box 2 Folder 20 Lindsey, Jason, "Pearl Buck I", 1964


Box 2 Folder 21 Slade, William Adams, China: A Bibliographical List, 1930


Box 2 Folder 22 Zinn, Lucille S., "The Works of Pearl S. Buck: A Bibliography", 1977