Collections : [Yale University -Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library]

The Whitman collection consists of letters, manuscripts, photographs, artwork, and personal papers documenting the life and work of Walt Whitman. There is personal and business correspondence from Whitman to family, friends, editors, and publishers, including Richard Maurice Bucke, John Burroughs, Julius Chambers, Moncure Conway, Nathan Hale, James R. Osgood and Company, George Routledge & Sons, William Sloane Kennedy, William Michael Rossetti, John Swinton, and Louisa Whitman. There are letters to Whitman from Civil War soldiers and from a number of writers, including Samuel Clemens, John Camden Hotten, William Douglas O'Connor, Allen Thorndike Rice, and Algernon Swinburne. There is also a small group of third-party correspondence to Whitman scholar George Rice Carpenter.
Whitman's writings are well represented in the Rabinowitz and Van Sinderen gifts. The Writings subseries in the Van Sinderen gift includes subdivisions for autobiographical writings, diaries, lectures and speeches, notes and notebooks, outlines and proposals, poetry and the writing of others. The writings are present chiefly in galley proofs, many corrected and signed, and holograph manuscripts.
Photographs and artistic representations of Whitman include work by well-known nineteenth century photographers, studios, and artists. There are photographs by Thomas Eakins, William Kurtz, Major & Knapp Engraving, and Brady National Photographic Art Gallery. Works of art include a bust of Whitman by Samuel Murray, a woodcut by Bertrand Zadig, and engravings by Samuel Hollyer, William James Linton, and Stephen Alonzo Schoff. Also of note are papers relating to George Whitman and New York Civil War regiments.

The papers consist of journals, correspondence, drawings, maps, architectural plans, family papers and business papers relating to Washington Hood, his father John McClellan Hood, and the Hood family. Journals document Hood's surveys of the Ohio and Michigan border in 1835 and of northeastern Oklahoma in 1839, and also include notes on painting and engineering. Family papers consist chiefly of correspondence and include letters to and from family members that describe Hood's expeditions. John Hood's business papers consist of correspondence, legal papers, and financial papers that document John Hood's personal finances and the business partnership of Hamilton and Hood in Philadelphia. One daguerreotype by photographer James M'Clees is included in the family papers, likely depicting John Hood circa 1850. Architectural plans include drawings that formed the basis of the Hood country home Bessie Bell in Limerick Township, Pennsylvania (built in 1834), and an 1834 proposal for a U.S. Government building designed to centralize executive staff. Maps include an early manuscript draft of Hood's 1835 map of Indian tribes west of Arkansas and Missouri. Printed maps depict charts and waterways in eastern North America.

The collection provides evidence of the personal and professional life of Washington Irving and dates from 1802 to 1966. The collection documents Irving's writing career, diplomatic work, and travels through Europe, and consists of correspondence, writings, personal papers, and printed material. Correspondents include: Thomas Aspinwall, Dmitrii Ivanovich Dolgorukii, Catherine Rodgers Irving Paris, Sarah Sanders Paris Storrow, and Moses Thomas. The collection includes journals belonging to Emily Foster with whom Irving was acquainted while living in Dresden. Documents relating to Irving's brothers can also be found in the collection; these include a manuscript notebook of John Treat Irving's "Simon Pure Papers" and Peter Irving's journals describing his travels in Europe. The collection contains an mezzotint portrait of Irving and engraved illustrations for his publications.

Watercolors and pencil drawings created by Henry Sommer related to the United States Army Utah Expedition, including sites, persons, and other activities chiefly in the Kansas Territory and Utah Territory, 1858-1860. An identified site in the Kansas Territory consists of a view of a camp, probably near Fort Leavenworth. Identified sites in the Utah Territory include military camps at Camp Crosman, Camp Floyd (later known as Fort Crittenden), and Fort Bridger. Activities include views of American bison hunting and hare hunting as well as views of soldiers in camps. Includes an interior view of the quarters of Lewis Henry Little as well as an interior view of a Mormon family at their home.

The collection contains drafts of writings and correspondence documenting the professional life of New Haven area writer Wayland Wells Williams. Writings contain drafts of published and unpublished novels, including Goshen Street (1920) and "The King of Iceland's Eldest Son," and shorter works. Correspondence includes letters from Yale professor William Lyon Phelps and from prominent contemporaries Thomas Beers and Monty Woolley. There are also production files relating to the collection of poems, Castle in Spain (1942), and a folder of condolence letters.

The W. E. B. Du Bois Collection contains Correspondence, Writings, including drafts of Dusk of Dawn, and The World and Africa, and Subject Files.

Photographs collected by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library that document the photography of W. E. Hook, 1885-1908. The collection chiefly includes photographs of sites in Colorado, as well as some images of New Mexico and Texas. Photographs in the collection document the different presentation methods used by Hook to market his images, including cabinet photographs, as well as the variant titles he used in negatives and on photographic mounts.

Correspondence with Tibetan language scholars, Tibetan religious and government officials, and others, 1937-1988; and related materials, 1950s-1980s, including research materials, notes, writings, and translations by Needham; subject files about Diluv Khutagt, Anzhai Li, Edna Bryner, and Tibetan materials in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library; clippings, other printed materials; photographs; and artifacts relating to Tibet, Tibetan literature and art, and Needham's curatorship of the Beinecke Library's Tibetan collection. Correspondents include Bstan-'dzin-rgya-mtsho, Dalai Lama XIV, and his representatives; Tsipon Shuguba and members of his family; and Chögyam Trungpa.