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American Literary Studies
John Steinbeck Collections
The Collections
Stanford has significant holdings of Steinbeck materials, including manuscripts,
notes, correspondence, photographs, and ephemera. These are contained
in a number of different collections, each described below.
Location of All Collections: Department of Special Collections,
Green Library
Finding Guides: Details are listed below with the specific collections.
Research Access and Use: Materials in the Department of Special
Collections are non-circulating and must be used in the Special Collections'
Reading Room in the Cecil H. Green Library. The Reading Room is open
10:00am to 5:00pm Monday through Friday. Photocopies, photographs, and
microfilm can be made of some materials in the collections. For more
information about the collections and access policies, please contact
Special Collections by telephone at (650) 725-1022, by electronic mail
at speccollref@stanford.edu or by regular mail at the Department of Special
Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California 94305-6004.
Career of John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
American novelist, short story writer, and journalist, Steinbeck was
born in Salinas, California in 1902 and attended Stanford University intermittently
from 1919-1925. Author of more than thirty books, Steinbeck achieved his
first popular and critical successes with two short novels, Tortilla
Flats (1935) and Of Mice and Men (1937). A dramatized version
of Of Mice and Men (1937) was immensely popular and was followed
by a United Artists film production in 1939. With The Grapes of Wrath
(1939), for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Steinbeck arrived
at international renown. Based on his visits to Depression-era migrant
labor camps in California's Central Valley, Grapes of Wrath was
also made into a major motion picture in 1940, the second of ten of his
books to be filmed. Steinbeck's work in the early 1940s was highly varied
but less well-received, including The Forgotten Village (1941)
and The Moon is Down (1942). When the war broke out in Europe,
he went to North Africa and Italy as a correspondent for the New York
Herald Tribune, out of which came several journalistic books. Critical
acclaim returned to Steinbeck with two postwar novels set in his native
California, Cannery Row (1945) and East of Eden (1952).
He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.
Steinbeck Collections at Stanford:
John Steinbeck Collection, 1902-1979
Size: 2.5 linear ft.
Call Number: M0263
Finding Guide: A printed version is available in the reading room
of the Department of Special Collections. Electronic versions of this
finding guide are also available. If you have Microsoft's Internet Explorer
version 6.0 or higher, click here to connect to the XML version on the
Stanford server; if not, click here for the html version on the Online
Archives of California server.
Contents: The collection contains manuscripts, typescripts, and
galley proofs of major and minor pieces, including The Red Pony (1937)
and Cannery
Row (1945).
It also contains approximately 1500 letters from Steinbeck, including
personal,
family,
and professional
correspondence. Notable files are
to Katherine Beswick, Steinbeck's Stanford classmate and close friend,
Elaine
Scott Steinbeck, his third wife, and Elizabeth Otis, his literary agent.
Additionally, the collection includes press coverage of Steinbeck's
travels, legal papers, marriage and birth certificates, and other memorabilia,
photographs,
artwork,
and filmstrip. Detailed descriptions of all materials in this collection
are provided by A Catalogue of the John Steinbeck Collection at Stanford
University, edited by Susan F. Riggs (Stanford University Libraries,
1980; Spec Coll Felton PS3537.T27 Z5S7 1980)
Wells Fargo Steinbeck Collection, 1892-1981
Size: 5 linear ft., 111 volumes
Call Number: M1063
Finding Guide: A printed version is available in the reading room
of the Department of Special Collections. Electronic versions of this
finding guide are also available. If you have Microsoft's Internet Explorer
version 6.0 or higher, click here to connect to the XML version on the
Stanford server; if not, click here for the html version on the Online
Archives of California server.
Contents: The collection contains more that 770 letters, photographs,
clippings, unpublished short pieces, and ephemera from John Steinbeck
and the Steinbeck and Hamilton families, dating from the 1890s to the
early 1980s. The bulk of the collection consists of John Steinbeck's letters
to his family, beginning in 1923 with his letters home from Stanford University.
It also contains unpublished, previously unknown poems and stories written
by Steinbeck in his teens and twenties. Also present are hundreds of family
photographs as well as correspondence to the family from Steinbeck's grandparents
and other relations. A set of first editions of Steinbeck's books, personally
inscribed to his sister Esther Steinbeck Rodgers, are also part of the
collection and are catalogued separately.
Papers related to the production of
The Forgotten Village, 1941
Size: 2 linear ft.
Call Number: M1350
Contents: The collection contains the original, 32-page holograph
manuscript of the screenplay for The Forgotten Village composed
in Steinbeck's hand in a large-format, bound ledger book; 25 letters
from
Steinbeck to the director, Herbert Kline; a 30-page hand-made album of
on-location production photographs assembled by Rosa Kline; vintage
publicity
stills and reviews of the film. The Forgotten Village was
Steinbeck's first major project after The Grapes of Wrath and
this collection provides a thorough record of Steinbeck's composition
of the
screenplay and of his contribution to the production of the film.
John Steinbeck Letters to Beth Steinbeck Ainsworth, together with literary typescripts, documents, photographs, and books, circa 1888-1989.
Call Number: M 1501
Content: 65 letters and cards from John Steinbeck to his sister Beth Steinbeck Ainsworth during the 1950s and 1960s, and 10 additional letters written jointly to Ainsworth and another sister, Esther Steinbeck Rodgers.
John Steinbeck Letters to Margaret Gemmell, 1925-1926.
Call Number: Misc 147
Content: 7 letters from Steinbeck to Margaret Gemmell; also one,
untitled short story. Margaret Gemmell was Steinbeck's friend at Stanford.
John Steinbeck Correspondence with Jules Buck, 1949-1954.
Size:.25 linear ft.
Call Number: M0538
Contents: 30 letters from Steinbeck to Buck and 14 carbons from
Buck to Steinbeck. Buck, an American film producer working as a script
writer for producer Darryl Zanuck at Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
in 1949, collaborated closely with Steinbeck on the first draft of the
screenplay for "Zapata." Elia Kazan was the director. Included
with the correspondence is a short manuscript sketch of Zapata, "Emiliano's
courtship," written by Steinbeck, as well as a photocopy of the first
draft continuity of the screenplay "Zapata," 26 November 1949,
that Steinbeck and Buck collaborated on. There is also interoffice correspondence
within Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation between Darryl Zanuck, Elia
Kazan, and Jules Buck.
John Steinbeck Letters to Leslie S. Brady (1954-1964)
Size: .5 linear ft
Call Number: M0621
Contents: 48 letters from Steinbeck to Brady, 16 carbons of Brady's
responses. During his stay in Paris in 1954 Steinbeck wrote 17 articles
for Le Figaro. He contacted Brady, then US. Public Affairs Officer
in charge of Press, Information and Cultural Affairs (USIA) to review
his manuscripts before submission, hoping to insure that he did not inadvertently
offend French sensibilities. The two maintained their friendship through
the following years. Carbon copies of Steinbeck's Le Figaro articles
are also included.
John Steinbeck Letters to Shirley Fisher (1959-1962)
Call Number: Special Collections: In Process
Contents: 9 Letters from Steinbeck to Fisher, who was a senior
partner in a literary agency and who along with her husband was close
to Steinbeck and his third wife, Elaine Steinbeck.
John Steinbeck Movie and Theater Collection (1937-2002)
Size: Circa 52 linear feet
Call Number: M1500
Finding Guide: A preliminary inventory is available here.
Contents: Includes movie material (posters, lobby cards, press material, etc.) and theater material (posters, playbills, playscripts, etc.)
Edward Flanders Ricketts Papers , 1936-1979 (inclusive), 1936-1947 (bulk)
Size: 7.5 linear ft
Call Number: M0291
Finding Guide: A finding guide is available here.
Contents: Edward Flanders Robb Ricketts was born in Chicago, Illinois May 14, 1897. From 1923 until his death in 1948, Ricketts lived in the Monterey, California area where he pursued his career as a marine biologist and became good friends with John Steinbeck. Personal and professional papers including incoming and outgoing correspondence, a few letters from Herbert Kline to John Steinbeck, notes on intertidal marine life, printed articles, manuscript notes of unpublished biology articles, a philosophical manuscript, financial records, photographs and notes from trips to West Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands prepared by Ricketts for the use of John Steinbeck. Also includes notes and other materials used for additions and revisions of Ricketts' publication, Between Pacific Tides, and correspondence about the book.
Manuscripts of Materials by Other Authors About Steinbeck
- Benson, Jackson J., The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer
: Research materials, 1935-1980
- Size: 8.75 linear feet.
- Call Number: M522
- Steinbeck, Elaine and Wallsten, Robert, Steinbeck: A Life in Letters
: Production materials, 1975.
- Size: 1.25 linear ft.
- Call Number: Misc 354
Selected Biography and Criticism
- Benson, Jackson J. The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer.
Viking Press, 1984.
- ______________. The Short Novels of John Steinbeck: Critical Essays
with a Checklist to Steinbeck Criticism. Durham: Duke University
Press, 1990.
- Coers, Donald V. et al, ed. After the Grapes of Wrath: Essays on
John Steinbeck in Honor of Tetsumaro Hayashi. Athens: Ohio University
Press, 1994
- ___________. John Steinbeck as Propagandist: The Moon is Down Goes
to War. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991.
- Ditsky, John. John Steinbeck: Life, Work, and Criticism. Fredericton,
Canada, 1985.
- Fensch, Thomas, ed.. Conversations with John Steinbeck. Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 1988.
- Hayashi, Tetsumaro. John Steinbeck: The Years of Greatness, 1936-
1939. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993.
- _______________. The Steinbeck Quarterly. John Steinbeck Society
of America. Muncie Indiana, 1969-1993.
- Hughes, R. S. John Steinbeck: A Study of the Short Fiction.
Boston: Twaynes, 1989.
- Owens, Louis. John Steinbeck's Re-Vision of America. Athens,
University of Georgia Press, 1985
- Simmonds, Roy S. John Steinbeck: The War Years, 1939-1945.
Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1996.
Bibliography of John Steinbeck
- DeMott, Robert. John Steinbeck; A Checklist of Books By and About,
Opuscula Press, 1987.
- Goldstone, Adrian H. John Steinbeck, a Bibliographical Catalogue
of the Adrian H. Goldstone Collection Papers, 1972- 1974. University
of Texas, 1974.
- Harmon, Robert B. Steinbeck Bibliographies: An Annotated Guide.
Metuchen, N.J., 1987.
- Hayashi, Tetsumaro. A Handbook for Steinbeck Collectors, Librarians,
and Scholars. SMS #11, 1981.
- __________. A New Steinbeck Bibliography: 1971- 1981, Scarecrow
Press, 1983. Parini, Jay. John Steinbeck: A Bibliography. London:
Heinemann,
1994
Other Manuscript Depositories
- The Adrian H. Goldstone Collection, Humanities Research Center, University
of Texas, Austin, Texas
- The Annie Laurie Williams Collection, Columbia University, NY
- The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, California
- The Pierpoint Morgan Library, New York, NY
- The Steinbeck Research Center, San Jose State University, San Jose,
California
- University of Virginia Libraries, Charlottesville, Virginia
- International John Steinbeck Association, Ball State University, Muncie,
Indiana
Last modified:
February 8, 2012
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