Department of Special Collections and University Archives
McFarlin Library. University of Tulsa.  2933 E. 6th St.  Tulsa, OK.  74104-3123 (OKT - OkTU)

Edmund Wilson papers

Collection   1976-014

Dates:  1936-1972.

Extent:  (2 boxes).

Level of Description:  Item level.

Name of creator(s):  Unknown.

Date of creation:  Undetermined.

Scope and Content:   Consists of 74 handwritten, typed and carbon copy typed letters, postcards and telegrams between Wilson and various editors at Doubleday & Company (including brief correspondence between Jason Epstein and Leonard Baskin concerning a proposed portrait of Wilson for a dust jacket), as well as correspondence with friends and colleagues such as Leon Edel, Helen Gould, Sidney Hook, Elizabeth Huling and Henry Miller. Also included are handwritten, typed, and carbon copy typed drafts of book reviews, plays, articles, etc., by Wilson and by other people; miscellaneous items such as Wilson’s course handouts and notes for a Comparative Literature course, “The Language of Literature,” taught at Harvard; publisher's announcements; dust jacket proofs; scrapbooks of press cuttings; photographs of Wilson and his library/study; as well as maps of various locations.

Administrative/Biographical History: 

Access and Copyright:

Language and Scripts:  English.

Finding aid/Inventory:  Finding aid available online.

Provenance/Source of Acquisition:   The preponderance of the material purchased from The Brick Row Book Shop, Dec 1987. Helen Gould letters purchased from Between the Covers, Jul 2003; a few items have been removed from various books within the Wilson library. 

Date(s) of description:   Milissa Burkart, Jul 1996; rev. Mar 1998; rev. Feb 2003; rev. Aug 2003.

Access Points:

Subject Headings 

 
Personal names 

Corporate names

Places
 

Inventory

1:1

Alexander to Wilson.  Handwritten and signed letter, 7 Jul 1938.  “Your letter has only just caught up with me after going to Mt. Rainier then to Banff....”  Removed from Modern Monthly, Sept 1935.

Auchincloss to Wilson.  Wedding announcement, 26 Apr 1958.  Removed from Les Cahiers de la Pleiade.  Ete-Automne, 1950, #10.

Beckett to unknown recipient.  Handwritten and signed letter, 9 Jun 1950.  Removed from Watt, first edition.

Typed fragmentary account of a conversation with Berenson, with handwritten revisions, 1p.  Removed from Passionate Eighteen.

Blotner to Wilson.  Carbon copy typed and signed letter, 13 Mar 1968.  “Five years ago the Faulkner family asked me to do William Faulkner's biography....”.

Wilson to Blotner.  Typed and signed letter, 21 Mar 1968.  “I was in New Orleans when Faulkner was there but I never met him....”

Names in Agnon.  Galley proof of a book review with handwritten revisions and notes.

Wilson to Davenport.  Handwritten and signed letter, 21 Jul 1948.  “Thanks for your letter—I know the Beerbohm skit on Wilde....”

Rouilles au Khirbet Qumran.  Typed preliminary report, in French, with handwritten revisions and notes, 18p.  Removed from Revue Biblioque, 2 Apr 1952.

1:2

Handwritten and signed letter, 8 Apr 1941.  “Dear Mr. Johnson:  Thank you for your letter about my Kipling essay....”

Doubleday to Wilson.  Carbon copy typed letter, 3 Feb 1942.  “There have been hundreds of books published about the war done by newspaper correspondents, diplomats, airmen, soldiers and many others....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 9 Feb 1942.  “Dear Mr. McCormick:  Thank you for your letter.  I shouldn't care, however, to undertake such a book....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 22 Apr 1942.  “Dear Mr. McCormick:  I want to include in my anthology some selections from With Walt Whitman in Camden....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 6 May 1942.  “Dear Mr. Elder:  Thank you for your letter about With Walt Whitman in Camden....

Handwritten and signed letter, 10 Jun 1942.  “Dear Mr. McCormick:  I have worked the [—] I need in the Walt Whitman book....”

Typed and signed note, 28 Jun 1942.  “Dear Mr. McCormick:  Another book published by Doubleday which I find I need for my anthology is The Life in Letters of W. D. Howells by Mildred Howells....”

Typed and signed postcard, 9 Oct 1942.  “Dear McCormick:  Thank you for your letter — By the way, I have now got permission to use the Henry Adams Life of Lodge....”

Typed and signed letter with handwritten note by unknown author written in the margins, 16 Jul 1943.  “Dear McCormick:  Thank you for your letter.  I still think that the anthology ought to be advertised in the Sunday papers, which reach more people....”

Typed and signed letter, 27 Aug 1943.  “Dear Miss Ahrens:  Thank you for your letter of July 29.  I should be grateful if you could answer the following questions....”

Telegram, 13 Apr 1946.  “Sorry impossible to go to Washington.  I never speak or broadcast or do anything of that kind.

Handwritten and signed note with a handwritten note by unknown author written in the margins, 8 May 1946.  “Dear Mr. McCormick:  Thank you for your letter.  I should be glad to have any more money there is coming to me....”

Handwritten and signed letter with handwritten note by unknown author written in the margins, 20 Sept 1946.  “Dear McCormick:  Could you have your accounting department send me a check for whatever cost has been accumulating....”

Typed and signed letter with handwritten note by unknown author written in the margins, 1 Dec 1947.  “Dear MacCormick [sic]:  Do you think that your accounting department would send me—at the New Yorker—whatever is due me from my Europe book?....”

Typed and signed letter, 9 Dec 1947.  “Dear McCormick:  Thank you for your letter.  I was interested to see these pathetic specimens of Doubleday's feeble pretense to have advertised my book....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 27 Aug 1948.  “Dear Elder:  There is another point that I wish you would have checked....”

Typed and signed letter, 20 Nov 1952.  “Dear Mr. [Jason] Epstein:  I can't change the subtitle of the Finland Station....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 3 Feb 1953.  “Dear Mr. McCormick:  My understanding is that Doubleday no longer has any interest in retaining its rights to my book The Shock of Recognition....”

Handwritten and signed letter with AN by unknown author written in the margins, 4 Feb 1953.  “Dear Mr. Epstein:  Have you consulted the contract to find out whether you were right to handle the foreign rights of The Finland Station?....”

Handwritten and signed postcard, 17 Mar 1953.  “Dear Mr. Epstein:  Your cover for The Finland Station sounds all right....”

Handwritten and signed note, 19 Apr 1953.  “Dear Mr. Epstein:  I am leaving Princeton for Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Mass....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 1 Aug 1953.  “Dear Mr. Epstein:  Thank you for your letter.  My attention has just been called to a mistake on p. 339 of The Finland Station....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 10 Aug 1953.  “Dear Mr. Epstein:  I haven't yet received the check for $250 for Finland Station royalties....”

Typed and signed note, 29 Sept 1953.  “Dear Mr. Epstein:  I should be glad to have, the first of October - if it isn't too much trouble - anything that is due me from the Finland Station....”

Typed and signed letter, 22 Jun 1954.  “Dear Jason:  Is there anything substantial due me from the Finland Station?....”

Jason Epstein (editor) to Leonard Baskin.  Carbon copy typed letter, 7 Nov 1957.  “The White Goddess is Graves' muse....”

Baskin to Epstein.  Handwritten and signed postcard, 3 Nov 1957.  “My dear Jason:  Why a flattering portrait of Wilson.  Has he been a flatterer....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 5 Mar 1958.  “Dear Cushman:  ....About [Anthony] Powell:  He is just [cunning] enough to read, but I don't really think much of him....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 13 Jun 1960.  “Dear Mr. Cushman:  Since you offer to give me a copy of the Powell, I will cancel my order with Blackwell's....”

Typed and signed letter, 2 Jan 1963.  “Dear Mr. [Pyke] Johnson:  I find that I am somewhat in the dark about my arrangements with Doubleday in connection with my book To the Finland Station....”

Typed and signed note with handwritten note by unknown author written in the margins, 18 Apr 1969.  “Dear Mr. Johnson:  I am not clear as to whether, according to our contract, I or Doubleday has the right for disposing of the foreign rights of my To the Finland Station....”

1:3

Edel to Wilson.  Handwritten and signed letter, 16 Dec 1953.  “Dear Edmund, I have received your tear-sheets of James items from catalogues....”

Wilson to Edel.  Typed and signed letter with envelope, 31 Mar 1960.  “Dear Leon:  I have just been looking at the Life of John Oliver Hobbes (edited by her father)....”  Handwritten note by Edel on envelope indicates this and the enclosed card and mechanical butterfly were an April Fool's joke.

“Cycles of Reciprocity.  The History, Impressions and Problems of Continuity in a proposal for the re-teaching of culture history among a tribe of American Indians in the 20th century.”  1968.  Mimeograph typescript, labeled as being the fulfillment of a course requisite, Department of Anthropology, State University of New York at Buffalo.  pi-iii, 1-36.

Farrar, Straus & Giroux to Wilson.  Typed and signed letter, 12 Feb 1980.  “Dear Professor Edel:  ....Following are some unanswered queries about The Thirties....”

1:4

Ambrose Bierce:  The Devil’s Lexicographer.  Handwritten review, 8p.

Faulkner to Wilson.  2 typed and signed letters and 1 mimeograph typed letter with attachment, 1956.  In reference to Eisenhower's “People-to-People Program.”

“The New York Wampum Collection:  to keep it, or give it back to the Indians?”  Photocopy of a typescript, 23 Dec 1970, 61p.

Jesus, In Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten.  Handwritten review, 2p.

Foote to Wilson.  Typed and signed letter, 31 Mar 1950.  “I hope that the enclosures do not flood you with more material than you want....”  Page 1-2 removed from Prison Etiquette; page 3 removed from Still No Amnesty.

Typed and signed letter to Wilson, 24 Sept 1954 and carbon copy typescript of Friend's translation of The 10 Plagues of Egypt  by Nathan Alterman. 

Furness to Wilson.  Typed and signed letter, 20 Sept 1942.  “....It is inexcusable to have waited so long to acknowledge my appreciation of the heartening things you had to say about what I have written on Whitman....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 21 Sept 1942.  “Today I recalled a choice Emerson anecdote, told by Whitman to Herbert Gilchrist....”

Handwritten and signed note with bibliography attached, 22 Sept 1942.  “I find among [—] here at school the enclosed partial list of my publications....”

Additional handwritten and typed notes pertaining to Whitman and Emerson.  All Furness items removed from Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, Vol. XIV.

Gibian to/from Wilson.  Typed and signed letter, with handwritten response by Wilson at bottom, 18 Feb 1961.  “I have just finished reading your review of the new Dictionary of Slang in the New Yorker....”

Golb to Wilson.  Typed and signed letter, 11 Mar 1971.  “....Even if one insists on the strictly sectarian nature of the Manual of Discipline, I do not see how Rengstorf's explanation or my own comes into conflict with this view....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 13 May 1943.  “Dear Helen...I saw your friend Ana Eisner [?] the other day, and she thought that you might not be absolutely adverse to a job in the country...”

Handwritten and signed letter, 16 Jun 1943.  “Dear Helen:  Of course I am going to send you a copy of the anthology...” 

Handwritten and signed letter, 29 Jul 1943.  “Dear Helen...am nowhere done with the ms. that I want you to type...”

Handwritten and signed letter, 3 Aug 1943.  “Dear Helen:  Yes: we’d be delighted to have you come the 9th—I’ll have quite a little work to be done by then...”

Handwritten and signed letter, 19 Aug 1943.  “Dear Helen:  I’m sorry you got away without my saying goodby [sic] to you...”

Handwritten and signed letter, 25 Aug 1943.  “Dear Helen:  That cocoon has just hatched out, producing a beautiful red butterfly with white spots and black markings...”

Handwritten and signed letter, 7 Sept 1943.  “Dear Helen:  These are for you.  The one of R [?] and Ricky is better of Ricky than of R [?]...”

Handwritten and signed postcard, 19 Nov 1943.  “Dear Helen:  We were glad to get your letter and sorry not to have seen you when you were in NY...” 

Eleanor Wilson to Gould (Tierney).  Handwritten and signed note, 27 Jun 1972.  “Dear Helen Tierney:  Edmund answered nearly all his letter so I too want to thank you for yours and perhaps we shall see you if you come to Wellfleet.” 

Suden.  German theatre program for the play, c1953-1954.  Removed from Monieux.

Wilson to Hook.  Handwritten and signed letter, 11 Feb 1938.  “Thank you very much for letting me know about the book [dealers]—I’m very anxious to see you and will try to arrange something when I get to town....”

Horgan to Wilson.  Typed and signed postcard, 22 Jul 1965, with ink and watercolor sketch on verso.

“AB.”  Typed text with caricatures in pencil; inscribed to Wilson and signed by Horgan.  Note reads:  “Messrs. Adam & Blaine have the honor to announce a Distinguished List for the new Publishing Season.  Spring 1965.” 

“Archetype & Charisma:  Notes on the Viability of the Theatre Art, U.S. 1960s.”  Hand-made book with typed text and caricatures in ink and ink wash.  Inscribed to Edmund and Elena Wilson and signed by Paul Horgan.

1:5

Handwritten and signed letter, 15 Nov 1941.  “Thanks for your letter.  It looks as if [Bruce] expected the [WR] to fold up....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 4 Jul 1945.  “I was awfully glad to get your long letter and I appreciate very much your paying the bills, etc....”

Bunny Wilson to Huling.  Handwritten and signed letter, 14 May 1950.  “Will you please find out Michael [Dwight's] address and forward this to him yourself?....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 4 Jun 1950.  “I am sending you a copy of The Little Blue Light....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 28 Jul 1950.  “Our general feeling is that we'd love to pay you a visit, but your postcard is rather vague....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 3 Feb 1952.  “Darling Betty:  You and [Jason] both sent me that [—] clipping and it has [set] me up no end....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 10 Feb 1952.  “I'd be infinitely obliged if you would look up the Virginia Woolf business and send me the results....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 27 May 1952.  “We didn't know about your operation, and would have called you up in the hospital....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 11 Jan 1953.  “I wish you would send a copy of your Burgess-Maclean article airmail to Cyril Connolly....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 8 Nov 1953.  “I was interested in [—] magazine, though I kept looking at it as if it were Life and expecting a spot of cheesecake....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 24 May 1954.  “We were glad to hear from you—sorry your magazine has folded up....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 9 May 1955.  “I wanted to see you before I left, but our last weeks were a series of disasters....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 14 Dec 1956.  “What has become of you?....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 5 Jan 1957.  “We were awfully glad to hear from you  - We are moving to Cambridge the 18th to spend the rest of the winter....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 4 Nov 1958.  “I've been so long in answering your letter because I've had to take more than a month doing an article about the Pasternak book....”

Handwritten and sigend postcard, 5 Feb 1962.  “This is the dead fish that, as usual, we are going to get slapped in the stomach with this year....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 26 Apr 1966.  “I am sending off the proofs to you today....”

Bunny Wilson to Huling.  Handwritten and signed letter, 1 Jun 1966.  “The [Straus] office is very insistent that they should pay your bill, so make it $150 and send it to me....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 23 Aug 1966.  “We were glad to get your cheerful postcard.  This summer has been strenuous for Elena....”

Handwritten and signed letter, 5 Sept 1968.  “Bob Hatch told me you were in the hospital....”

“A Classified Bibliography of the Finds in the Desert of Judah.  1958-1969.” 

“James Joyce Memorial Broadcasts by His Family and Friends.”  Typed list of corrections and misprints in Finnegans Wake, 32p.

1:6

“Dear Osceola.”  Typed poem with handwritten revisions, 2p.

Solzhenitsyn.  Photocopy of a published translation from the German.  The MIT Press.

1:7

Wilson to Miller.  Handwritten and signed letter, with typed transcription of the same, 19 Jan 1941.  “I have just read Patchen's book and I am only lukewarm about it....”

The Poems of Sappho.  Typed translation from the Greek, 15p.

Wilson to Mumford.  Typed and signed letter, 27 Apr 1936.  "Dear Lewis:  Thank you for your letter.  I didn't know whether my Russian stuff really made very much sense in that form, as those articles are only excerpts from a longer account....”

“The Great Baldini.”  Excised article from The Atlantic Monthly, undated.

Photo of unidentified woman removed from Wilson’s copy of The Best of and the Last of Edwin O’Connor.  1970.

“Some Further Notes on Phelps Putnam by His Wife, Una.”  Carbon copy typescript with handwritten revisions, 24p. 

“Text of Songs on the Program of Una Fairweather (Soprano).”

1:8

1:9

Typescript of a Cyrillic text with handwritten revisions.  Section 1, p1-90. 

Section 2, p1-129.

p130-243.

2:1

The Gospel and the Stars.  Handwritten review, removed from The Princetonian, Vol VI-VIII, 1882-1884.

Sheed to Wilson.  Handwritten and signed letter, 26 Nov 1968.  “I enjoyed our lunch very much.  I hope it did not cut into your afternoon's work....”

Silver to Wilson.  Typed and signed letter, 14 Mar 1943.  “I have just passed some very pleasant hours reading The Shock of Recognition....”

“The Right Hand.”  Photocopy of a typescript, translated by Michael Glenny, 14p.

2:2

Vaczek to Wilson.  Typed and ;signed letter, 28 Dec 1965.  “My wife Barbara met you some weeks ago in New York at a cocktail party –Jean Stafford is a mutual friend - and you spoke about Hungarian literature....”

Viuteuil to Wilson.  Handwritten and signed letter, in French, 28 Feb 1930.  In reference to Proust.

Calling card.  Removed from An Airman’s Letter.

Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus.  Typed translation and adaptation by Charles Walker, removed from a black binder, 43p. 

Walker to Wilson.  Typed and signed letter, 29 Apr 1953.  “I would like to thank you again for referring me to the subject of Henry B. Fuller as a possibility for a thorough study....”

Whittle to Wilson.  Typed and signed letter, 6 Dec 1970.  “It was with some surprise that I learned you wanted me to revise the introduction to the edition....”  In reference to The Poems of Trumbull Stickney.

Wilt to Wilson.  Typed and signed letter, 30 Jun 1944.  “I managed to find an old copy of the Poe article....”

2:3

“The Ballad of Blubell Island.”  Typed poem with handwritten revisions, 1p.

Wood to Wilson.  Telegram, 20 Aug 1935.  (First Clinical Hospital, Odessa)  “Hope illness not serious telegraph whether shall notify Guggenheim your mother also concerning funds good recovery keep us posted.  Openroad.  [Wilson became ill in Odessa while visiting in 1935.  “14” on the telegram refers to 1400 or 2 o'clock].

Photocopy of telegram with handwritten (author unknown) identifying Russian address and date.

“The avenue had emptied of its seething crowds....”  Carbon copy typescript with handwritten revisions, 17p.

Typescript in Cyrillic, with handwritten revisions, 14p.

Carbon copy typescript in Cyrillic, with handwritten revisions, 39p.

2:5

Edmund Wilson.  Taken at Utica College, Utica, NY, Oct 1964.  1 photograph, 7 photo-negatives.

Edmund Wilson.  "Edmund Wilson at the New Yorker, March 25, 1963."  by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Magnum Photos.  1 photograph.

Dana Payne (as the elder Mr. Cattermole) pictured with Walker Ellis (as the Reverend Robert Spaulding).  Removed from The Dial.  1911.  1 photograph.

View of a track competition featuring a runner named Plimpton.  Removed from The Dial.  1911.  1 photograph.

Views of the Wilson library/study.  Taken by Gloria Nardin Watts.  13 photographs.

2:7

2:8

2:9

2:10

Mimeograph carbon copy typed handouts, with handwritten notes in Wilson’s hand, for a Comparative Literature course “The Language of Literature,” which taught at Harvard, 1959-1960, class size about 10 students.  52p.

Handwritten notes, in Wilson’s hand, on individual students, 13p.

Book cover and preliminary pages for The Scrolls From the Dead Sea.  2 copies.

Provincetown Playhouse playbill for “Fashion, or Life in New York.”  A comedy by Anna Cora Mowatt.  c1845.

Class exercises program for Princeton College, 15 Jun 1885.

Ink sketches with handwritten captions, 1p; found folded at p104 of Wilson's copy of Easy Lessons in Einstein by Edwin E. Slosson.

Printed card:  “Edmund Wilson regrets that it is impossible for him to:  Read manuscripts, write articles or books to order, do editorial work....”

The Boys in the Back Room.  Publisher's announcement.

To the Finland Station.  Dust jacket [proof copy].

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.  Lists of Foundation Fellows for 1939 and 1940.

Press cuttings of articles and stories appearing in unidentified newspapers, pasted into a handmade binder.

Press cuttings excised from The Daily Journal, Jul-Sept 1885, pasted into a scrapbook with photocopies of press cuttings found tipped in.

Maps:  London; Reims; Paris; Rome and Viterbo; Venice; Chaumont, Paris, and Strasbourg; Israel; Jerusalem.

Press cutting from Saturday Review of Literature found tipped in Pen Portraits and Reviews by George Bernard  Shaw.