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Introduction Patricia C. Willis The Yale Collection of American Literature was formed in 1911 by the gift of Owen F. Aldis, 1874, of his collection of first and other notable editions by American writers of belles lettres. The collection, kept thereafter as a separate entity with its own curator, has continued to develop along the lines of Mr. Aldis's interests, including fiction, drama, poetry, some historical writing, but excluding, for example, work by religious writers or early American historical figures. Bibliographical completeness received greater attention than rarity or association, although rare books and association copies abound. From the appearance of Anne Bradstreet's The Tenth Muse in 1650 to the present, American literature itself has grown in scope and stature until the list of collectible authors has become ungainly. The idea that a library might attempt to hold, for example, all the works of fiction published in America from 1774 to 1900, which is the premise of bibliographies by Lyle H. Wright, cannot be translated to suit the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first. Choices and opportunities govern collecting today and will do so into the next century. Bibliographical completeness, always desirable for authors whose papers are at Yale, has in some other cases yielded to concentration on textual completeness or representative samples. While the addition of books has gone on undiminished, and while literary manuscripts were often given to the Yale Library in earlier periods, collection development under former Curator Donald C. Gallup, 1934, and faculty advisor, the late Norman Holmes Pearson, 1932, began to emphasize archival collections of twentieth-century writers. Today it is the author's personal papers which are of far more interest than the fair copy of a poem or an appealing group of letters. The papers that bear witness to the creative process--an author's notes, drafts, setting copies, corrected proofs, and the documentation, such as correspondence, which surrounds them--are chiefly to be desired, but no curator would refuse Gertrude Stein's hand-sewn vests or the other special oddments which often accompany papers. It is through the extended concept of "archives" that the collection has acquired its extra-literary materials such as photographs, works of art, and memorabilia. The following descriptions point to some of the important archival collections and the interactions characteristic of groups of papers. Far from an exhaustive account of the resources in American literature in the Beinecke Library, these descriptions represent only a few of the major groups of papers. They are followed by a list of large holdings.
 Comments:Ellen R.
Cordes, ellen.cordes@yale.edu |