University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

Brandt & Brandt Literary Agents, Inc. has been in business since 1913 and still operates today in New York City, as Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents, Inc. The three typescripts in this collection are by authors under contract at Brandt & Brandt: George Harmon Coxe (1901-1984), an American writer of crime fiction (The Crimson Clue); Emily Hahn (1905-1997), an American journalist and author (Love Conquers Nothing: A Glandular History of Civilization); and Josephine Lawrence (1889–1978), an American novelist, journalist, and children's author (Song in the Night). The books represented as typescripts here in this collection were all published in 1952.

John Dos Passos (1896-1970) was an American novelist and artist born in Chicago, Illinois. This collection contains the galley proof for his semi-autobiographical book The Great Days.

Kermit Vanderbilt (born 1925) was a professor of English and a widely published author. This collection includes the typescripts and page proofs for his book American Literature and the Academy, published in 1989.

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.

The papers document the literary career and the personal and professional life of twentieth-century American novelist and writer Waldo David Frank. Comprising correspondence, writings, publicity, writings by others, memorabilia, photographs, scrapbooks, and clippings spanning from 1879 to 1977, the collection contains 132 boxes and 3565 folders. The correspondence documents Frank's personal and professional relationships with writers, editors, artists, friends, and family. Letters from friendships with other writers and artists such as Jean Toomer, Sherwood Anderson, Alfred Stieglitz, Lewis Mumford, Van Wyck Brooks, and Hart Crane document congenial collaborations, sharing of ideas, and disagreements. The writings contain his notebooks, major works, articles, essays, and early writings tracing Frank's works and ideas of society and culture with psychological and social themes of man and his environment. Frank's passion for the culture and study of Spain, Latin America, and Mexico is apparent in correspondence and his research, preserved through notes and photographs of South America and Mexico. Letters and photographs display Frank's relationships with family members, his wives (Margaret Naumburg, Alma Magoon Frank, and Jean Klempner Frank) and his children. The materials in this collection divulge not only the writings of Waldo Frank, but the struggles of the writer and his encounters with himself and society as he seeks his vision of truth in the world. He was courageous in the face of his critics and his political enemies even when experiencing both written and physical attacks. Even though Frank claimed he was an outsider he was embraced by the people and cultures he championed and studied. Although largely forgotten by the end of his lifetime, his correspondence, writings, and ideas remain, providing insight into literary circles, political ideas, and historical events in the United States and Latin America during the early- to mid-twentieth century.