Collections

The collection consists of programs, scripts, and memorabilia relating to folk, theatrical, and historical pageants collected by George Pierce Baker in the early part of the twentieth century. The collection includes a copy of the pageant George Pierce Baker authored for the American Society of Engineers.

The papers consist of correspondence, manuscripts, printed matter, photographs, and memorabilia documenting George Pierce Baker's professional activities as head of the Department of Drama at Yale University. Correspondents include playwrights, critics, actors, and producers, who had been Baker's students. The papers detail Baker's activities as a lecturer, consultant to the film series Chronicles of America, chairman of the executive committee of the American Shakespeare Foundation, and author of a pageant for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Baker's interest in the Little Theatre movement, American Indian culture and art, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Peterborough Memorial Pageant are also described.

The George Pierce Baker Papers contain scripts from a scenario workshop that he taught at Yale and student papers from other courses.

This collection primarily documents the life and work of George Penfield Jennings and his immediate family, particularly his father William J. Jennings and his daughter Bessie C. Jennings. Additional records related to Jennings ancestors and relatives can be found in Record Group 8, Miscellaneous Personal Papers.

The papers contain correspondence with artistic and literary friends, Plank art work, art work of others, writings of friends, and a small quantity of personal papers. Prominent correspondents include H. D., Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Patrick White.

The George Platt Lynes diaries consist of diaries and datebooks which record his activities and thoughts, starting with a journal of Lynes' first trip to Europe in 1925 and ending with entries in a pocket datebook just weeks before his death in 1955. Though his early and later years are well documented, there are no diaries for the years 1931-1941. Accompanying the diaries are a few odd pieces of personal memorabilia, including a notebook of dinners given during the early 1940s and printed versions of writings by Glenway Wescott form the early 1920s.

Two scrapbooks, with loose pages and items, containing clippings, original photographic prints (by Lynes and others, including PAJAMA and Brassai), postcards, and reproductions of artworks. These volumes document Lynes's focus on photographic design elements and his developing aesthetic in his early years. Among the subjects represented are: Royal families; athletes; popular musical and film performers (with numerous images of Johnny Weismuller and Marlene Dietrich); nude models; Pavel Tchelitchew paintings and set designs; high fashion models; and humorous photographs from magazines. Ten of the loose pages feature contact prints of Lynes and his friends and family, including: Paul Cadmus; Katharine Anne Porter; Barbara and Lloyd Wescott; Adelaide Sparkman Lynes; Somerset Maugham; Jared French; Monroe Wheeler; and Glenway Wescott. Another loose page contains 26 prints of individuals posed as part of Max Ewing's "Carnival in Venice" series.

The papers include professional and family correspondence, periodicals and pamphlets, books annotated by George Reber Wieland and scientific and personal photographs. The professional correspondence deals with his scientific expeditions and with negotiations on his proposed gift to the United States of a tract of land in South Dakota known as the "Fossil Cycad National Monument."

The papers include reprints, clippings, correspondence with John Fulton, and biographical material of George R. Minot.

The diaries of George Ritch White, which span from 1896 to 1954 (the diary for 1937 is absent), provide an extensive record of one man's life, work, interests, observations, and travels. Diary entries document in detail White's family life, friendships, and hobbies as a boy; his studies as a young man at Tufts University and Yale University; his work as a statistician for the New York, New Haven, & Hartford Railroad; his daily observations, social and housekeeping activities, and income and expense accounts; and, most notably, his extensive travels across the United States and Canada by train.