Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

Correspondence, manuscripts, typescripts, notes, photographs, and printed materials relating to his research, writing, and teaching. The correspondence relates chiefly to research for his books, articles, essays, and lectures as well as reactions, scholarly and popular, to his works. There are single letters for authors including Maxwell Anderson, Lawrence Durrell, Randall Jarrell, and Upton Sinclair; several letters each from John Masefield, James Thurber, and E.B. White; 21 letters from Clifton Fadiman; correspondence with Columbia University faculty and students; with classical scholars in the United States, Great Britain, and Europe; with publishers including Alfred A. Knopf and Oxford University Press; with his literary agent Curtis Brown, Ltd.; with HORIZON MAGAZINE, as chairman of its Advisory Editorial Board; with the Book-of-the-Month Club, as a Judge; with Encyclopedia Britannica Sound Seminars; correspondence concerning his very popular syndicated radio talks; and letters from his readers, ranging from members of women's literary clubs to headmasters of British secondary schools.

Twenty-seven letters from Barker to Professor Charles Anthon (1797-1867) of the Classics Department of Columbia College and one letter to a Mr Blackwell. The letters were written between July of 1827 and September of 1831 and relate principally to Professor Anthon's work on a new edition of Lemprière's Classical Dictionary. The letters are all in a clear 19th-century hand.