University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

August Mencken (1889-1967) was an American civil engineer and author. This collection comprises August Mencken’s correspondence regarding his brother, H.L. Mencken, his research and work on a scale model of the Confederate cruiser Alabama, and miscellaneous collected writings from friends and colleagues.

Burton Rascoe (1892-1957) was an American literary critic, journalist, editor, and author working in the first half of the 20th century. His confrontational style stirred up much debate and helped generate interest in up-and-coming writers that Rascoe believed showed promise; most notably, Rascoe was an early champion of writers such as James Branch Cabell, Theodore Dreiser, and H. L. Mencken. The collection consists of his correspondence, including some with famous literary figures; writings by Rascoe in draft and published form; papers relating to a lawsuit with Max Annenberg; diaries and notebooks; photographs; and clippings.

The Clara and Rudolf Kirk collection of William Dean Howells material consists of literary and visual materials by or about William Dean Howells, an American author, playwright, and literary critic. It was compiled by Clara and Rudolf Kirk, who were scholars studying Howells, circa 1940-1963. The collection includes essays and reviews written by or about Howells, correspondence and newspaper clippings by or regarding Howells, six scrapbooks about Howells' life and career, and other miscellaneous materials.

This collection contains twenty-one letters from Professor Daniel Hoffman (1923-2013), former US Poet Laureate, to Professor Norman Kelvin (1924-2014), dating from 1950 to 2012. These letters document the friendship between Kelvin and Hoffman, their careers, and their personal lives.

Edward Sculley Bradley (1897-1987) was a scholar, author, educator, and administrator at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a prolific writer and editor, serving as editor of the General Magazine and History Chronicle, Philadelphia, 1945-1956. He published biographies of literary figures George Henry Boker and Henry Charles Lea, as well as editions of works by Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman. Bradley was considered an international expert on Whitman, editing several important editions of the poet's Leaves of Grass. The Sculley Bradley papers include his personal and professional correspondence dating from 1923 to 1962, material from several literary censorship cases for which he testified, corrected drafts of his manuscripts for the Comprehensive Reader's Edition, Norton Critical Edition, and Variorum edition of Leaves of Grass, ephemera and graphics associated with Walt Whitman, and a small amount of material on other authors.

Esther B. Aresty (1908-2000) was a cookbook collector and culinary historian who wrote on food, cooking and etiquette. This collection documents Aresty's personal and professional activities, primarily through correspondence, publication drafts, and research materials regarding her books, entitled The Grand Venture (1963), The Delectable Past (1964), The Best Behavior (1970), and The Exquisite Table (1980).

This collection contains letters from Lewis and Sophia Mumford to Evelyn Manuel Huber, Lewis Mumford's cousin once removed. The letters date from 1959 to 1993 and document the private and professional activities of Lewis and Sophia Mumford. A family photo album of the Baron, Huber and Mumford families is also included.

The papers of journalist, writer and cultural critic, Gilbert Seldes are primarily comprised of newspaper clippings that Seldes used as research for his writings. Drafts and printed copies of several articles are included, as well as a draft of his 1956 book, The Public Arts.

Edward St. John Gorey (1925-2000) was an American author and artist, primarily known for his children’s stories and illustrations of children’s books, although he also produced adult-oriented work. Sometime around 1977, Gorey established a company, Doomed Enterprises, to handle all matters related to publication and licensing of his work. This collection consists primarily of records of Andreas Brown's and the Gotham Book Mart's records relating to Doomed Enterprises, documents relating to the execution of the Edward Gorey estate after 2000 (for which Brown served as an executor), and other documents and artifacts documenting Gorey’s public image and legacy.

Harold Dies (1914-2012) was a trustee of the Dreiser Trust from its establishment following Helen Dreiser's death in 1955 to his own death in 2012. The Dreiser Trust managed the income and approved contracts for sale of Theodore Dreiser's published works. This collection documents Harold Dies' work with the Dreiser trust and includes financial information; agreements, copyright, correspondence, and royalty statements relating to the works of Helen Dreiser, Theodore Dreiser (bulk), and Paul Dresser; correspondence relating to the Trust and the estates of family members; legal and court records relating to estates of family members; some personal material of Harold Dies and members of the Dreiser family (including Gertrude A. Hopkins Dorn (niece of Theodore Dreiser), Helen Dreiser, Theodore Dreiser, Vera Dreiser, and Paul Dresser (brother of Theodore Dreiser)); and publications using Dreiser material or Dreiser-inspired content.

Harry Mathews (1930-2017) is an experimental poet and prose writer. Mathews is well known for authoring several highly acclaimed novels; co-founding and co-editing the literary magazine, Locus Solus; and for his membership in the French avant-garde literary society, Olipo. The collection documents Mathews’ professional life, and to a lesser extent, his personal life and includes drafts, typescripts, and corrected typescripts of Mathews' prose and poetry; publicity and promotion resulting from his literary work; research files probably used for writing his books; teaching and workshop records; writings by others; extensive correspondence which is restricted from use unless permission is granted by Mathews; and a small amount of audio visual material as well as several computer files.

This collection includes material related to the lives and work of Helen (1901-1985), Ira (1908-1997), and Michael Wolfert (1936-2001). It contains correspondence between the family and others; manuscripts by all three subjects, as well as others; financial documents; personal documents; photos taken by and of the family; newspaper clippings collected by Helen and Ira; and notes and miscellanea from all three subjects.

Henry Miller (1891-1980) was an American author and artist best known for his controversial books such as Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring and Tropic of Capricorn. The collection consists of two drawings, one photograph, letters from Miller to Tambimuttu, and a small number of published writings and promotional material.

Howard Melvin Fast (1914-2003) was a best-selling and prolific American author of historical fiction, mysteries, and science fiction, known for his books on themes of patriotism, social justice, and the immigrant experience. He wrote nearly 100 books and more than 150 short stories, as well as numerous screenplays, stage plays, and newspaper columns. The Howard Fast papers include correspondence, journals, appointment books, address books, financials, writings, promotion and reviews, scrapbooks, biographies, profiles, chronologies, bibliographies, interviews, governmental and political files, vital records, personal documents, awards, photographs, artwork, and audiovisual materials. The papers were deposited at the University of Pennsylvania over the course of 45 years and represent nearly all facets of the writer's life.

James Lambdin Henderson, a native of Philadelphia, was a member of the Philadelphia literary circles and a friend of Lewis and Sophia Mumford, Hilda Doolittle, and members of the Powys family of Welsh writers. This collection includes correspondence with these and several other of Henderson’s friends, as well as some miscellaneous material relating to the correspondents, such as photographs and newspaper clippings.

This collection contains research materials collected and compiled by James M. Gibson for a biography of Horace Howard Furness, The Philadelphia Shakespeare Story: Horace Howard Furness and the Variorum Shakespeare, published in 1990. The bulk of this collection consists of photocopies of original nineteenth and early twentieth century documents made between roughly 1975 and 1985. This collection gathers hundreds of letters and articles that relate to H. H. Furness, from over fifty libraries and repositories, and illuminates Gibson’s research and writing process. Furness (1833-1912) was a leading Shakespeare scholar, and thus some of the material pertains to the study of Elizabethan theater.

Born to a working class family in Chicago, James T. Farrell (1904-1979) rose quickly to be a leading figure for 20th century naturalism in American literature. An exceptionally prolific writer, Farrell published works spanning over five decades; however, his critics expressed that his output led to poor craftsmanship and editorial discretion throughout his later works. In addition to his professional works, Farrell produced a seemingly inexhaustible amount of correspondence, diaries, articles, and musings which covered a wide range of topics from politics to baseball. The currently available portion of this collection consists of over one hundred linear feet of personal and professional correspondence. Having kept many copies of his own drafts and letters as well, the correspondence provides a nearly complete view into Farrell’s conversations with publishers, politicians, family, fans and critics. Perhaps most importantly, this collection represents Farrell's legacy — an insatiable writer who fought to leave his mark on the world.

Thorne Smith (1892–1934) was an American author of comedic supernatural fiction. His best-known work is the two Topper novels, published between 1920 and 1930. The collection consists of correspondences between Joseph Blotner, a then-Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania writing his dissertation on Smith, and various associates of Thorne Smith; and typescripts and manuscripts of Smith's novels, including Topper, The Night Life of the Gods, and Rain in the Doorway.

Joseph Hergesheimer (1880-1954) was a prominent American novelist and short story writer of the early 20th century whose best-known novels include The Lay Anthony (1914), Three Black Pennys (1917), and Java Head (1919). This collection presents a fragmentary sample of his notebooks which include drafts of stories, poetry, and recollections of F. Scott Fitzgerald. These are supplemented by autobiographical material, bibliographies, a reminiscence about writer James Branch Cabell, and correspondence (from Dorothy Hergesheimer and Louisa Jessup) with William McCarthy, the donor of the collection.

Harry T. Moore (1909-1981) was a professor English literature at Southern Illinois University and a specialist in the works of D.H. Lawrence. Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) was an influential literary and social critic. This collection contains detailed letters from Mumford to Moore, concerning both literary and personal matters.

Maggie Paley is a prolific journalist and author. Her works include Bad Manners, a novel, and The Book of the Penis, a book of popular nonfiction. Paley was a well-connected participant in a wide variety of NYC cultural life during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, and this collection contains her own writing, correspondence with notable figures, and cultural material she collected. Paley worked as an editor at The Paris Review and a staff writer for LIFE and The Saturday Evening Post before establishing a career as a freelance journalist. Since the 1960’s she has been a social fixture in New York artistic circles, and was a close acquaintance of such figures as Jill Krementz, Harry Matthews, and Rachael Hadas.

Martha Millet (1918-2004) was a poet and literary critic active in the Communist Party USA. Along with her second husband, noted pamphleteer and left-wing journalist Sender Garlin (1902-1999), she was a frequent contributor to Marxist, Communist, and left-leaning journals, and published several books of poetry. This collection includes 9 boxes of material related to her poetic and political writings. It contains most of her poetic and critical work in manuscript form; copies of journals and anthologies to which she contributed; scrapbooks assembled by Millet to commemorate her publications; documents from the Helsinki Peace Conference of 1955 which Millet attended; work by her husband, Sender Garlin, as well as a transcript of his FBI file; and works by others, including the transcripts of Ezra Pounds WWII era radio broadcasts, which Millet used to write a book attacking Pound’s political thought.

Paul Eldridge (1888-1982) was an American poet, novelist, essayist, short story writer, and teacher. Most prolific in the 1940s, Eldridge's writing focused on issues of World War II, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and Zionist and Jewish issues more generally. This collection consists of manuscripts, typescripts, and reprographic copies of Eldridge's poems, stories, and essays; scrapbooks of clippings related to Eldridge's writing and other activities; dustjackets; photographs; issues of newspapers and periodicals in which his columns appeared; and correspondence related to Eldridge's writing and career.

Collection contains 54 boxes of professional and family correspondence; 68 boxes of writings by Brooks, including typescripts, galleys, and notes for books, articles, prefaces, and addresses, as well as juvenalia, diaries, and notebooks; and 20 boxes of memorabilia, photographs, and newspaper clippings.

Vera Dreiser (circa 1908-1998) was a psychologist who practiced first in New York from 1947 to 1961, and later in California until her retirement in 1972. She is the niece of novelist Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) and of composer Paul Dresser (1858-1906). This collection is comprised of materials from Vera Dreiser’s personal and professional life as well as materials related to the musical and literary estates of Paul Dresser and Theodore Dreiser.