Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

The files of Curtis Brown, Ltd. literary agency include correspondence with authors, publishers, and other agents and deal with the editing and publishing of trade and textbooks, serial rights, reprints, dramatic rights, translations and foreign rights, promotion and copyright registration. For each author there are contracts, royalty statements, tax statements, and other financial materials. There is also a contract file, including cancellations and related correspondence, from 1914 to 1988. Among the cataloged correspondents are: Louis S. Auchincloss, W.H. Auden, Erle Stanley Gardner, Robert Graves, Ogden Nash, Ayn Rand, and Sloan Wilson.

Correspondence, manuscripts, documents, photographs, memorabilia, scrapbooks, and printed material. Among his correspondents represented in the collection by at least 75 items are: William Archer, Hobart C. Chatfield-Taylor, Augustin Daly, Austin Dobson, Hamlin Garland, Bronson Howard, William Dean Howells, Henry Arthur Jones, Henry Cabot Lodge and Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury. There are bound volumes of letters from Henry C. Bunner, Andrew Lang, Rudyard Kipling, Theodore Roosevelt, miscellaneous letters to Matthews, and Matthews' editorial correspondence with the North American Review. There are three boxes of manuscripts, including poems by 21 authors; essays on drama; and plays by Henry Arthur Jones, Don Marquis, and Matthews; bound volumes of manuscripts of Matthews' plays and his book, "Development for the Drama." Also included are 17 boxes of his manuscript notes for his many lectures, articles, and books; and memorabilia, primarily from the theatre and from his life at Columbia. Material on the Dunlap Society, which was devoted to printing works relating to the theater, of which Matthews was co-founder with Laurence Hutton, includes documents and correspondence, much of which is between then secretary Evert J. Wendell and members on meetings and other Society business around 1914. In addition, there are notes and correspondence of Herbert Kleinfield relating to his research on Matthews.

Papers of Leah Goldstein Javne Salisbury, consisting of correspondence, contracts, scripts, and financial records. Among the correspondents are Christopher Fry, William Gibson, Eugène Ionesco, Dorothy Parker, S.J. Perelman, and Stark Young.

Records of literary agents Paul Revere Reynolds, founder of Paul R. Reynolds agency, and his son, Paul Revere Reynolds, Jr. The records consist of correspondence, contracts, scripts, and financial records. The files are rich in correspondence between authors and agents and provide important information about some of the most significant works published in the last seventy years.

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.

Papers and 50 boxes of paperback books.

Correspondence, manuscript music scores, copies of scores, playscripts, scenarios, watercolor drawings and other stage designs, contracts, legal papers, programs, clippings and other printed materials, microfilms, records, tape recordings, and photographs. Among Moross's work are the musical play, "The Golden Apple"(1954), dance music for "Ballet Ballads"(1945) and for "Frankie and Johnny"(1938), the film score for "The Big Country"(1958) and for "The Cardinal"(1963), and his Symphony No. 1 (1943). There are some financial papers and production records for the staging of his works. Among the cataloged correspondents are Aaron Copland, Agnes George De Mille, Ned Rorem, Virgil Thomson, and Thornton Wilder.