Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

The collection consists of the editorial and production archives of Random House, Inc. from its founding in 1925 to the 1990s. The correspondence and editorial files include many of the prominent novelists and short story writers from 20th-century American and European literature: Saul Bellow; Erskine Caldwell; Truman Capote; William Faulkner; Sinclair Lewis; André Malraux; Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder. Among the poets there are files for W. H. Auden; Allen Ginsberg; Robinson Jeffers; Robert Lowell; and Stephen Spender. In the area of theater there are files for Maxwell Anderson; Moss Hart; Lillian Hellman; Eugene O'Neill; and Tennessee Williams. Random House transacted business with many fine presses and noted typographers and the archives contain files for Nonesuch Press, Grabhorn Press and Golden Cockerel Press, as wll as for Bruce Rogers, Valenti Angelo, and Edwin, Jane, and Robert Grabhorn.

Correspondence, manuscripts, notes, course related materials, photographs, photostats, and printed materials of Rusk. Included are two small files of correspondence, approximately 100 items, relating to Rusk's editing of THE LETTERS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1939) and to his study of occasional poetry in Colonial America for the Colonial Project in American Literature. The manuscripts include several miscellaneous items by Rusk, and five Columbia University masters essays submitted to him in connection with the Colonial American poetry study. Also, 12,000 note cards relating to this study as well as 150 photostatic copies of books of Colonial American poetry. For the Emerson edition there are 14,000 note cards on Emerson's life and letters. There are also 1,000 note cards for Rusk's edition of THE LETTERS OF EMMA LAZARUS (1939). The Columbia course related materials consist of notes, syllabi, reading lists, bibliographies, examination questions, lists of students and a few letters from them for Rusk's American literature course, 1931-1951. The printed materials are mainly reprints of articles on R.W. Emerson, inscribed to Rusk and containing annotations by him. In addition there are 23 photographs taken by Rusk in 1913, of a Passion Play which was performed in the Philippines.

Correspondence, manuscripts, and books of Melville H. Cane. Among the correspondents are Van Wyck Brooks, Carl Jung, Lewis Mumford, William Saroyan, Upton Sinclair, Felix Frankfurter, Jessamyn West, and W.H.Auden. Included is a scrapbook of newspaper articles by Cane, written chiefly for the "New York Evening Post". He served as the Columbia University correspondent during 1901 and 1902, when he was studying for his degree at the School of Law

The material in this collection was originally housed in binders in Barney Rosset's New York apartment, and cover his personal and professional endeavors as a radical publisher, intellectual, and overall man of letters. It consists of writings, letters, photographs, interviews, films, catalogs, publishing files related to both Grove Press and Evergreen Review, and extensive biographical information on Rosset. The entire collection has been rehoused into archival quality boxes and folders. Each binder had been labeled, generally with some sort of topical or chronological designation. In most cases the binder labels will be retained as file titles, and the subdivisions within binders have become folders and retained, to a great extent, the titles assigned to them by the creator. In some cases the staff of the RBML altered or elaborated on existing folder titles for general clarity and ease of research. In some cases, the collection contains both original and typed (or transcribed) copies, the latter often taking the form of computer printouts that were originally held in binders marked "Master" or "Master Disk" to indicate their contents were on computer disks. These original binder titles have been kept throughout the finding aid.