Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America
Archives related to: Church, Barbara
| title | The Marianne Moore Papers | repository | Rosenbach Museum & Library |
| description | In 1968, Marianne Craig Moore sold her literary and personal papers to the Rosenbach Museum & Library. In a 1969 codicil to her Will, she added a bequest to the Rosenbach of her apartment furnishings. Upon her death in February 1972, this unusually complete and diverse collection found its permanent home. The collection is remarkable for its inclusiveness. Most visually arresting, her living room (installed on the third floor of the Rosenbach) looks almost exactly as it did in Greenwich Village (at 35 West Ninth Street), her residence from 1965. Books are everywhere. The poet’s personal library, much of it on display in the Moore Room, contains more than 2,000 monographs, plus hundreds of periodicals. Moore retained copies of most of her own books in all their printings. In addition, first appearances of both poems and prose in magazines are present (in the Moore Periodicals Collection), as well as an extensive group of reviews of her work, beginning in 1916. Most of this work is supported by manuscripts in the Moore Papers, from drafts to setting copies of many of her 192 published poems and 72 unpublished poems (whose use is restricted), as well as versions of much of the prose. These in turn, are complemented by extensive working materials. Most informative is a series of commonplace books begun in 1907. These small notebooks are filled with notes made from both reading and conversation that Moore mined again and again for her poems. Clippings on hundreds of subjects, another history of her reading, are arranged in vertical files. Moore was a prodigious saver of correspondence. Her collection includes letters by and to her grandfather, beginning in 1850 when he first left home to begin his work as a Presbyterian Minister. These letters are followed, chronologically, by those written by her mother to a cousin, Mary Craig Shoemaker, beginning in the 1890’s—a particularly important correspondence documenting Moore’s early years. When, in 1904, Moore’s brother John Warner went to Yale, Moore began her life-long correspondence with him, broken only during vacations when he was at home, and during the two years when she and her mother lived with him in Chatham, New Jersey (1916-1918). During the time Moore attended Bryn Mawr College (1905-1909), the Moores wrote round-robin letters, a three-way chronicle of their activities. As in the case of the Shoemaker letters, those sent by Moore and her mother were eventually returned to Moore by the recipient. More than 3,000 correspondents are represented in the collection, along with many of Moore’s drafts or carbon copies of her letters. Correspondence with other writers is particularly rich, since Moore wrote to H.D., Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, and E.E. Cummings throughout their careers. Writers of a later generation, such as Elizabeth Bishop, are also represented, as are artists such as Malvina Hoffman and Joseph Cornell. Several large collections of Moore’s letters have been given to the Rosenbach by her correspondents. Portrait photographs of Moore, from cartes de visite showing her as an infant to the famous cape and tricorn hat studies of the 1950s, offer examples of the work of such well known artists as George Platt Lynes, Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, Lotte Jacobi, Berenice Abbott, Esther Bubley and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Snapshots taken by Moore document trips to England and to the Northwest as well as scenes near her home in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The collection contains other notable material, such as daily appointment books from 1920-1969, address books, more than a hundred watercolor and pencil sketches by Moore, and a group of drawings and paintings by contemporary artists. In addition, there are household and personal effects, from the miniature knives Moore celebrated in an essay to the trademark tricorn itself. It is necessary to consult to the Literary Executor of the Marianne Moore Estate before using any unpublished Moore material, and also the photographers, or their Estates, before reproducing their work. |
| extent | See repository for further details |
| formats | |
| access | Contact repository for restrictions and policies. |
| record source | http://www.rosenbach.org/archive/collections/categories/moore_collection.pdf |
| finding aid | On line and in repository. |
| updated | 03/16/2023 10:29:59 |
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| title | Wallace Stevens Papers, 1856-1975 | repository | The Huntington Library |
| description | See repository's Web site or the Online Archives of California (OAC) for a complete finding aid. Biographical Sketch Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was one of the foremost American poets of the first half of the 20th century. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Stevens retained an interest during his lifetime in his native Berks County, Pennsylvania. His wife, Elsie Viola (Moll) Stevens, came from Reading, and both Stevens and his wife devoted considerable time and energy (primarily in the 1940's) tracing their family ancestries. Though Stevens refused to consider his life a dichotomy, his poetic activities were accomplished while he was holding a full-time position as a legal advisor for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company in Hartford, Connecticut, the firm for which he acted as Vice-President from 1934 until his death in 1955. Stevens began writing verse as a student at Harvard University and had a number of his verses published in the Harvard Advocate and the Harvard Monthly between 1898 and 1900. In 1908 and 1909 Stevens presented his future wife, Elsie Viola Moll, with two little notebooks of poems ( A Book of Verses and The Little June Book) which gathered together short poems Stevens had been experimenting with since leaving Harvard. Between 1914 and 1923 Stevens submitted poems to a number of journals, including Poetry (edited by Harriet Monroe), The Dial and Others (edited by Alfred Kreymborg). In 1923 was published Stevens' first book of poems, Harmonium. With Harmonium began a lifelong association with the publishing firm Alfred A. Knopf Inc. Stevens did, however, offer the small fine press, the Cummington Press, three of his books: Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), Esthitique du Mal (1945) and Three Academic Pieces (1947). The Alcestis Press, under the direction of Ronald Lane Latimer, printed Ideas of Order (1935) and Owl's Clover (1936). Stevens was twice awarded the National Book Award: in 1950 for The Auroras of Autumn (1950) and in 1954 for Collected Poems (1954). He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1955. |
| extent | Number of Pieces: 6,815 (including genealogical material) |
| formats | Manuscript Correspondence Photographs Ephemera |
| access | Collection is open to qualified researches by prior application through the Reader Services Department. |
| record link | http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf3489n60h/?&query=Wallace%20Stevens%20Papers&brand=oac |
| bibliography | Brock, R. A. (Robert Alonzo), 1839-1914, collector. |
| record source | http://catalog.huntington.org |
| finding aid | Unpublished finding aid available in repository. An electronic version is available on the Web site of Online Archives of California (OAC). |
| acquisition information | Acquired from Holly Stevens, January 1975. A few of the items catalogued with the Collection have been gifts from Wilson E. Taylor and Holly Stevens and later purchases from Holly Stevens. These are noted on the individual folders. |
| updated | 11/12/2014 11:30:00 |
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