UCLA Library Special Collections Literature Collections

UCLA Library Department of Special Collections

Literature

Children's Literature
Nineteenth Century Literature
Popular Literature & Printed Materials
Twentieth Century Literature

Allan H. Kurtzman Collection of Beat Literature

The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library and the Department of Special Collections have coordinated their collecting of British and American literature. The Clark's English printed books range from the 15th to the 20th century, but its strength is in 17th and 18th century studies. Special Collections' holdings overlap with the Clark chronologically, as in its collection of British pamphlets dating from 1660, the A.N.L. Munby collection of 18th century English plays, collections of Gothic writers William Beckford and Ann Radcliffe, or the Children's Book Collection described below, but the department's principal collecting periods are the 19th and 20th centuries.

Children's Literature

The Children's Book Collection (CBC) has been established through the acquisition of several private collections, notably those of Elvah Karshner, Bernard M. Meeks, Olive Percival, May and George Shiers, and d'Alté Welch. The strength of the collection resides chiefly in English and American publications before 1840 and includes titles issued by such publishers as the Newbery family, John Harris, Benjamin Tabart, and Kendrew of York. Among authors represented in depth are Maria Edgeworth, part of whose own library is in the collection; Lady Fenn, writing as Mrs. Lovechild, and Dorothy Kilner, writing as M. Pelham; and Mrs. Sherwood and Mrs. Trimmer, both prescriptive writers of the 19th century.

The English materials are supported by foreign language editions, particularly Madame d'Aulnoy's fairy tales. Early games and pop-up and other movable books form a major segment of the CBC, which includes the most extensive collection of harlequinades extant. The collection also includes some primary and secondary American textbooks, among them McGuffey readers and California textbooks. There is also a collection of modern juvenile books, including runs of the Newbery and Caldecott medal winners, and Russian children's books published between the two world wars.

Manuscripts supporting the CBC include more than a hundred of Maria Edgeworth's letters and holographs of some of her stories; Mrs. Sherwood's manuscript journal, largely unpublished; the papers of Margery Fisher; and the papers and drawings of Lucille and Holling Clancy Holling.

Nineteenth Century Literature

European and American holdings are representative; researchers will find works by the major writers of the century in the department. There are more comprehensive collections of Richard Henry Dana, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Arthur Rimbaud, for example, and the Edwin S. Shneidman and David W. Shneidman Collection of Herman Melville, which contains most of the first editions as well as Melville biographies and books on whaling.

The strength of the literary collections of this period is British, anchored in the Michael Sadleir Collection which the university acquired en bloc in 1951. The collection is housed in the Bradford A. Booth Memorial Room and includes first editions of Jane Austen, R. D. Blackmore, Rhoda Broughton, Fanny Burney, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, Theodore Edward Hook, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Captain Marryat, Anthony Trollope, and Mrs. Humphry Ward. Among published materials are many important publishers' series of the period and a comprehensive gathering of the cheaply published yellowbacks, the counterparts of modern paperback novels. The original acquisition, which has doubled in number of volumes since, is described completely in Michael Sadleir's XIX Century Fiction: A Bibliographical Record Based on His Own Collection (London: Constable & Co., 1951). Many single manuscripts support the printed collection. The department also holds part of the archive of the firm of Richard Bentley, publisher of many of the authors in Sadleir.

Popular Literature & Printed Materials

Reading matter which reflects popular culture and the history and marketing of printing has been collected. There is a collection of books of the Tauchnitz Edition, the first paperback line, which was sold at European railroad stations, followed by yellowback thrillers, dime novels, pulp magazines, and the paperback. The department has a collection of Little Blue Books published by Haldeman-Julius (ca. 1929-40).

Pulp magazine collections represent most popular genres: detective, mystery, romance, science fiction, and western. Examples of longer runs include Black Mask, Dime Detective Magazine, Weird Tales, and Wild West Magazine. The department holds the Nitka Collection of Fantasy and Science Fiction and a collection of first issues of comic books. There are American paperback novels from 1880 to date and books and papers of writers often apprenticed in pulp magazines and published in paperback: Henry Allen (Will Henry), Raymond Chandler, Frederick Faust (Max Brand), Donald Hamilton, Horace McCoy, and Jim Thompson. There are the papers of Michael Nava, whose detective fiction takes its roots from Chandler and Joseph Hansen.There are collections of popular authors Bret Harte and H. Rider Haggard.

Other popular literature includes American almanacs (ca. 1730- 1880), English chapbooks (ca. 1775-1850), American hymnals (ca. 1760-1870), English and American broadside ballads (ca. 1780-1890), American songsters (ca. 1820-1900), and 19th and 20th century American sheet music, with an emphasis on that related to California. Other popular printed material, such as postcards, has been collected in the department, particularly when pertaining to California and Los Angeles.

Twentieth Century Literature

Book collections support the study of primarily British and American literature of this period. There are first and other editions of British writers E.F. Benson, Ronald Firbank, E.M. Forster, John Galsworthy, A.E. Housman, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, William Plomer, Denton Welch, and Virginia Woolf; and American writers Willa Cather, M.F.K. Fisher, Marianne Moore, Katherine Anne Porter, and Ezra Pound. The department's avant garde collection includes copies of small press and finely printed editions of modern poetry.

There are collections of books and papers of British writers Max Beerbohm, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Norman Douglas, Lawrence Durrell, D. H. Lawrence, Harold Monro, George Bernard Shaw, and J. C. Squire; and American writers Theodore Dreiser, Haniel Long, Edouard Roditi, and Tennessee Williams. Gilbert A. Harrison's collection of Gertrude Stein is supplemented with works of writers and other members of her circle in Paris.

The department has papers and editions of writers whose broad ranges include California and Los Angeles: Mary Austin, Ray Bradbury, Raymond Chandler, Edwin Corle, Robinson Jeffers, Lawrence Lipton, Robert Nathan, Kenneth Rexroth, Aram Saroyan, Carolyn See, Michael Nava and Paul Monette.. There are also papers and editions of European and American writers settling in or around Los Angeles, many of whose later works interpret Los Angeles: Norman Cousins, Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Edward James, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, and Franz Werfel.

Books and papers of writers associated with California and Los Angeles include those writers who helped to create and who in turn commented on the culture of 20th century Los Angeles: bookman Lawrence Clark Powell and journalists and writers Paul Jordan Smith, Lee Shippey, John Weaver, and Matt Weinstock.

Guide to the Collection

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