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Dartmouth College Library
Collection Management & Development Program
Collection Development Policy

MANUSCRIPTS:
MODERN BRITISH AND
AMERICAN LITERATURE

COLLECTION AREA
GENERAL PURPOSE
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE PROGRAM
GENERAL SUBJECT BOUNDARIES
LANGUAGES
GEOGRAPHIC AREAS
TYPES OF MATERIALS COLLECTED
FORMAT OF MATERIALS COLLECTED
COLLECTING INTENSITY
OTHER RESOURCES AVAILABLE
CREATION DATE
REVISION DATE
LC CLASS
BIBLIOGRAPHER


COLLECTION AREA
Manuscripts: Modern British and American Literature
GENERAL PURPOSE
This collection consists of the complete papers, representative collections, or samples of the work of a number of British and American writers of fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction. The collection supports the study of and research upon several authors in toto and enables the student and scholar to handle and read from manuscript the work of several dozen other authors.
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE PROGRAM
The collection supports the teaching and research of students and faculty on all levels. Complemented and supported by the Rare Books Collection, the collection of Modern British and American literary manuscripts does not exist in a vacuum. Materials are available for students preparing assignments, papers and theses as well as for the teaching and research needs of the faculty. Use of the collection is more broadly based than the title would indicate. While the majority of users do come from the faculties of English and other languages and literatures, use is made of the collection by a number of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.
GENERAL SUBJECT BOUNDARIES
The collection is composed of papers of or relating to modern British and American authors in the broadest sense.
LANGUAGES
While English is by far the predominant language, manuscripts, particularly of correspondence, can be found in any of the several western European languages. No material is excluded from the collection on the basis of language.
GEOGRAPHIC AREAS
The collection encompasses the United States and the United Kingdom. At the same time, papers of an author residing abroad would not, by definition, be excluded.
CHRONOLOGICAL BOUNDARIES
While there are no specific chronological limits, the bulk of the collection falls in the period 1875 to the present.
FORMAT AND TYPES OF MATERIAL COLLECTED
All manuscripts, as defined in the general Manuscripts policy, are collected. These would include manuscripts and typescripts of works, corrected galley and page proofs, drafts of book designs and other "foul matter," financial records, and correspondence that clarify or illuminate a writer's work, a literary period, or a genre. Uncorrected galleys and page proofs are presented to the Curator of Rare Books. Books in either the Archives or the Rare Books Collections that contain significant annotations, dedications or additions are cataloged as both monographs and manuscripts with records appearing in both catalogs.
COLLECTING INTENSITY
The collection is the repository of choice for a number of authors who have presented or deposited their papers in their entirety. These include Erskine Caldwell, Philip Booth, Kenneth Roberts, Corey Ford, Richard Eberhart, Winston Churchill, Budd Schulberg, Ben Ames Williams, Percy Mackaye, Cornelia Meigs, Stephen Geller, and Burton Bernstein.

In a number of cases, there are substantial, although not complete, collections. Examples of this are collections of the papers of E. V. Lucas, Rupert Brooke, Robert Frost, Samuel Beckett, H. L. Mencken, and Genevieve Taggard.

The third category includes smaller collections that contain materials of enough substance to be of use to both the student and the scholar. A representative sample of this type of collection includes:

Wilfred Scawen Blunt
Joseph Conrad
Stephen Crane
Norman Douglas
John Galsworthy
R.B. Cunninghame Graham
W. H. Hudson
Vachel Lindsay
Henry Miller
Eugene O'Neill
George Bernard Shaw
Wallace Stevens
Edward Thomas
William Carlos Williams
Henry Williamson
Count Rumford

OTHER RESOURCES AVAILABLE
The most important resource is, of course, the Rare Book Collection. The books and manuscripts in the two collections support and complement each other. Other important resources such as bibliographies, biographies, critical studies and the like, may be found in the Baker stacks and in Sanborn House Library.
Creation Date
March 1983 (Philip N. Cronenwett)
Revision Date
March 1991 (Philip N. Cronenwett)
LC Class

Bibliographer
Philip N. Cronenwett

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Last updated September 27, 1996 by: CMDC@Dartmouth.Edu (mjs)