The Manuscripts Division is pleased to announce that the scrapbooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Class of 1917) and Zelda Fitzgerald are now online in the Princeton University Digital Library (PUDL). The Fitzgeralds’ daughter Scottie gave the scrapbooks to the Princeton University Library in the decades following the donation of most of the Fitzgerald Papers in 1950. F. Scott Fitzgerald saw life as raw material for literature. His gift for autobiographical observation and self-documentation can be seen in the way he kept his papers and scrapbooks. He chronicled his early life in “A Scrap Book Record, compiled from many sources of interest to and concerning one F. Scott Fitzgerald,” as he wrote boldly in white ink to label the volume. He traces his life from birth through Princeton and service in the U.S. Army during World War I, concluding with the acceptance of his short story Head and Shoulders for publication in The Saturday Evening Post (1920). Fitzgerald was perhaps inspired to keep scrapbooks by his mother, Mary “Mollie” McQuillan Fitzgerald, who chronicled his formative years until 1915 in The Baby’s Biography, by A. O. Kaplan, with Pictures by Frances Brundage (New York: Brentano’s, © 1891). Between 1920 and 1936, Fitzgerald compiled five other scrapbooks, in which he usually emphasized his published books and short stories, sometimes adding unrelated materials about his life, travels, and friends. Zelda Fitzgerald kept a scrapbook of her own until 1926, chiefly relating to her family and childhood in Montgomery, Alabama; and early married life with Scott and Scottie.

Scrapbook contents include newspaper clippings, book reviews, and interviews relating to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life and writing; tearsheets of magazine articles and short stories; dust covers and promotional announcements for books and collections; printed ephemera; formal studio portraits of the author, photographs of friends and acquaintances, and family photos (mostly small snapshoots) of the Fitzgeralds (Scott, Zelda, Scottie); memorabilia; and occasional documents and letters from authors, publishers, and friends. Many of the photographs and clippings are well known and have been often reproduced. But there are a few surprising items as well, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s check-stub book for the First National Bank of Princeton, October-November 1916, while he was a Princeton undergraduate; his grimacing self-portrait in a Photomaton coin-coperated photo booth, probably at a train station in the late 1920s; and his personal copy of the Directory of Directors, Writers etc. (1931), proudly kept because it includes his name in the company of Hollywood directors and writers. When Fitzgerald moved from Baltimore to North Carolina in 1936, he put the scrapbooks in storage, and though he later had them shipped to him in Hollywood, the author never again added to them.

The best resource for understanding the scrapbook contents, usually unidentified and undated, is Matthew J. Bruccoli, Scottie Fitzgerald Smith, and Joan P. Kerr, eds., The Romantic Egoists: A Pictorial Autobiography from the Scrapbooks and Albums of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974). This is because much of the contents was reproduced with commentary in The Romantic Egoists. Scottie Fitzgerald Lanahan noted (p. ix), “ninety percent of the illustrations in this book…was taken from the seven scrapbooks and five photograph albums….” Physical access to the original scrapbooks is restricted for compelling preservation reasons because all but The Baby’s Biography are largely made up of highly acidic newsprint pasted down on equally acidic album paper. The scrapbooks were digitized in 1999 as part of the Library’s Fitzgerald Papers preservation project, funded by the Save America’s Treasures, a grant initiative administered by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Over the past fifteen years, researchers have been able to consult the digitized scrapbooks in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. The inclusion of the Fitzgerald scrapbooks in the PUDL will now enable everyone to see and appreciate them, along with the manuscripts of This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Great Gatsby (1925). These materials and more can be found in the Fitzgerald Collection.

The online version of the scrapbooks has been digitally watermarked and provides information about “Usage Rights,” including form of citation, reproduction, copyright, and other issues. For information about reproducing selective images in the scrapbooks, please contact Public Services, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. rbsc@princeton.edu

First page of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
Scrapbook I, showing dust cover of
This Side of Paradise (1920)
and snapshots of Zelda.

The Manuscripts Division’s most important archival holdings for African American literature are the Toni Morrison Papers (C01491), the major portion of which are now open for research. But there are other relevant archival collections, chiefly in the archives of American publishing houses and literary magazines, and of American and British literary agenices. The most substantial for research are the author files for Richard Wright (1908-60), dating from 1938 to 1957, found in Selected Records of Harper & Brothers (C0103). These files include editorial and business correspondence with Wright, his agent Paul R. Reynolds, the publishing house’s editors, and promotional staff; reader’s reports; and review media relating to books published over several decades: Uncle Tom’s Children (1938), Native Son (1940), Black Boy (1945), The Outsider (1953), Black Power (1954), and Pagan Spain (1957), as well as books for which Wright supplied introductions. The Harper & Brothers files are complemented by the Wright files of the British literary agency Victor Gollancz Ltd. (C1467), which include correspondence, contracts, and readers’ reports for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Native Son, Black Boy, and American Hunger (1978). There are also Wright letters and photographs of 1946-49 in the Sylvia Beach Papers (C0108), as well as Wright’s novella The Man Who Lived Underground; and letters of 1945-56 in the author files of Story Magazine and Story Press (C0104).

Several other Harlem Renaissance authors are represented in holdings. For Langston Hughes (1902-67), the Manuscripts Division has occasional letters and photos in the Sylvia Beach Papers and Carl Van Doren Papers (C0072), and in the New Review Correspondence of Samuel Parker (C0111), the Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons (C0101), and the Archives of the John Day Company (C0123). Posthumous files (1968-72) pertaining to his books are found in the Archives of Harold Ober Associates (C0129), through their British affiliate Hughes Massie Ltd. Additional items are in the Franklin Books Program archives at Mudd Library. The Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons has author files for Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), including 100-plus items, 1947-63, of which 25 are letters by Hurston, mostly pertaining to her novel Seraph on the Suwanee (1948). Some additional Hurston material is found in the Story archives. For the African American poet and editor Kathleen Tankersley Young (1903-33), the Manuscripts Division has correspondence with New York book designer and printer Lew Ney and his wife Ruth Widen, 1928-32 (C1273). Young was editor of Modern Editions Press and Blues: A Magazine of New Rythms during the Harlem Renaissance.

The Manuscripts Division has a folder of letters (1901-5) from the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) to Harrison Smith Morris, editor of Lippincott’s Magazine, in the Harrison Smith Morris Papers (C0003); as well as correspondence of the African American historian Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), with fellow historian Charles H. Wesley, 1925-50 (C1310). Woodson was the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and in his writing called attention to W.E.B. Dubois and the Harlem Renaissance. Also in the Manuscripts Division are the correspondence files of the New York Urban League, 1922-79 (C0869). Three letters of 1905-6 about W.E.B DuBois’s Souls of Black Folk are found in correspondence between the Chicago publisher A. C. McClurg & Company and the London literary agent Charles Francis Cazenove (C1553). Also of interest is a small collection of papers of George Padmore (1903-59), a journalist born in Trinidad, including correspondence with Henry Lee Moon (1901-85), editor of the Amsterdam News (C1247).

Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) and Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) are the best-documented African American authors of the post-war generation in the Manuscripts Division. Ellison materials are primarily found in the archives of the Quarterly Review of Literature [QRL] (C0862). This literary magazine was edited from 1943 to the 1990s by the American poet Ted Weiss, who taught at Princeton, 1967-87. QRL‘s issue files include correspondence with Ralph Ellison, as well as corrected typescripts, and proofs of his second, posthumously published novel Juneteenth. Includes the following. (1) “The Roof, the Steeple and the People,” QRL, vol. 10, no. 3 (1959-60), relating to the nicoleodeon excursion. There are also proofs in box 6, folder 2, and a corrected typescript in box 6, folder 3; (2) “Juneteenth,” QRL, vol. 13, no 3-4 (1965), in box 8, folder 4; (3) “Night-Talk,” QRL, vol. 16 (1972), a movie-going episode in Atlanta, with an edited revision, box 11, folder 4. There are a few Ellison letters in the archives of The Hudson Review and in the recently acquired papers of Joseph Frank (1918-2013), Professor of Comparative Literature, who received a 3-page letter from Ellison in 1964, in which he explains the obscurity of the “pink hospital scene” in his novel Invisible Man by describing how he cut out a 225-page section from the middle of book. Gwendolyn Brooks is documented by 14 folders for the years 1944-58 in the Selected Records of Harper & Brothers (C0103), as well as additional materials in other collections. Recently, the Manuscripts Division acquired a sound recording and transcription of an interview that Playboy Magazine‘s articles editor James Goode conducted with James Baldwin (1924-87) in 1967 and Alex Haley (1921-92) edited and shortened for publication the following year (C1557).

Beyond African American authors, the Manuscripts Division holds some literary collections relating to the Afro-Carribean experiences. The best example is in the papers of the contemporary American author Madison Smartt Bell (C0771), Princeton Class of 1979, including manuscripts, corrected typescripts, and proofs for his trilogy about Toussaint Louverture and other leaders of the Haitian Revolution. The first novel was All Souls Rising (1995), which was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award and the 1996 PEN Faulkner Award, and won the 1996 Anisfield-Wolf Award for the best book of the year. The novel was continued in Master of the Crossroads (2002) and The Stone Builder Refused (2004). Providing context for Bell’s writing is his correspondence with his publishers, agents, and friends. The Manuscripts Division also holds the correspondence of Professor Léon-François Hoffmann with the Haitian poet René Depestre, 1984-2003 (C1103).

Archival, printed, and audiovisual materials about African American literature and history can be found in the various divisions and collections of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. For general information about holdings, please contact Public Services, at rbsc@princeton.edu

Harper & Brothers files for Richard Wright’s
The Outsider.

The Princeton University Library is pleased to announce that the major portion of the Toni Morrison Papers (C1491), part of the Library’s permanent collections since 2014, is now open for research. The papers are located in the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, in the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library. They contain more than two hundred linear feet of archival materials that document the life and work of Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate in Literature (1993) and Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities (Emeritus) at Princeton University. Morrison’s papers were gathered from multiple locations over more than two decades, beginning with the files recovered by the Library’s Preservation Office after the tragic fire that destroyed her home in 1993. Over the past eighteen months, the most significant of the papers have been organized, described, cataloged, and selectively digitized. The papers are described online in a finding aid.

Most important for campus-based and visiting researchers are some fifty linear feet of the author’s manuscripts, drafts, and proofs for the author’s novels The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), Paradise (1997), Love (2003), A Mercy (2008), Home (2012), and God Help the Child (2015). The only exception are materials for Song of Solomon (1977), which are believed lost. In the interest of preservation, by agreement with the author, all of these manuscripts have been digitized in the Library’s Digital Studio. Research access to digital images of Morrison’s manuscripts will be provided in the Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Room. The study of Morrison’s manuscripts illustrates her approach to the craft of writing and help trace the evolution of particular works, from early ideas and preliminary research, to handwritten drafts on legal-size yellow notepads, and finally corrected typescripts and proofs. The early drafts often differ substantially from the published book in wording and organization, and contain deleted passages and sections.

A single yellow notepad may contain a variety of materials, including content related to other works, drafts of letters, inserts for later typed and printed versions, and other unrelated notes. Corrected typescript and printout drafts often show significant revisions. Material from various stages of the publication process is present, including setting copies with copy-editor’s and typesetter’s marks, galleys, page proofs, folded-and-gathered pages (not yet bound), blueline proofs (“confirmation blues”), advance review copies (bound uncorrected proofs), and production/design material with page and dust-jacket samples. In addition to documenting Morrison’s working methods, the papers make it possible to see how books were marketed to the reading public and media, and also to trace the post-publication life of books, as they were translated, repackaged, reprinted, released as talking books, and adapted for film.

Among unexpected discoveries that came to light during archival processing are partial early manuscript drafts for The Bluest Eye and Beloved; and born-digital files on floppy disks, written using old word-processing software, including drafts of Beloved, previously thought to have been lost. Morrison also retained manuscripts and proofs for her plays Dreaming Emmett (1985) and Desdemona (2011); children’s books, in collaboration with her son Slade Morrison; short fiction; speeches, song lyrics; her opera libretto for Margaret Garner, with music by the American composer Richard Danielpour; lectures; and non-fiction writing.

Also valuable for researchers is Morrison’s literary and professional correspondence, approximately fifteen linear feet of material, including letters from Maya Angelou, Houston Baker, Toni Cade Bambara, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Leon Higginbotham, Randall Kennedy, Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, and others. Additional literary correspondence is found in Morrison’s selected Random House editorial files, where her authors included James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara, Angela Davis, and Julius Lester. Morrison also retained drafts, proofs and publication files related to two works by Toni Cade Bambara, which Morrison posthumously edited for publication; as well as photocopies of selected correspondence of James Baldwin, 1957-1986, and materials relating to Baldwin’s literary estate.

The remaining Morrison Papers are being processed and will be made available for research gradually over the next year, with arrangement and description to be completed by spring 2017. These include her Princeton office files and teaching materials, fan mail, appointment books (sometimes called diaries), photographs, media, juvenilia, memorabilia, and press clippings. Complementing the papers are printed editions of Morrison’s novels and other published books; translations of her works into more than twenty foreign languages; and a selection of annotated books. Morrison’s additional manuscripts and papers will be added over time.

Beyond the Toni Morrison Papers, the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections holds other archival, printed, and visual materials about African American literature and history. The best files are in American publishing archives. For example, the Manuscripts Division holds the Harper & Brothers author files for Richard Wright’s books Uncle Tom’s Children (1938), Native Son (1940), Black Boy (1945), Outsider (1953), Black Power (1954), and Pagan Spain (1957); Charles Scribner’s Sons author files for Zora Neale Hurston, chiefly pertaining to her novel Seraph on the Suwanee (1948); and the Quarterly Review of Literature files of Ralph Ellison’s corrected typescripts and proofs for three extracts from early working drafts of his second, posthumously published novel Juneteenth (1999).

For information about the Toni Morrison Papers, please consult the online finding aid. For information about visiting the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections and using its holdings, please contact the Public Services staff at rbsc@princeton.edu

Beloved early draft
Toni Morrison Papers (C1491)
Princeton University Library