The collection contains subject files, printed material, photographs, scrapbooks and slides on the subject of Alexander Pope and art, assembled by eighteenth-century scholar William K. Wimsatt. Much of this material may have been gathered in the course of Wimsatt's research for The Portraits of Alexander Pope (1965).
The papers comprise the professional and personal correspondence, teaching files, writings, and public talks that document William L. Holladay's career as a scholar of the Old Testament, his teaching career at both the Near East School of Theology and the Andover Newton Theological School, and his work as a minister for the United Church of Christ.
The papers of William Louis Gaines contain correspondence, topical files, and journals. Journals comprise the great majority of the collection and cover almost his entire life. The journals, often over six hundred pages per year, provide comprehensive details about the organizations where Gaines was employed, analysis of current events, personal information, and much introspection.
The papers contain correspondence and personal papers documenting the family life, business activities, and travels of William Lyon. Also included is a twentieth-century biographical sketch of Lyon.
The papers include correspondence, writings, lecture notes, student notebooks, research notes, memorabilia, and scrapbooks of clippings documenting William Lyon Phelps's career as a professor of English and popularizer of literature. Phelps's lecture notes and annotated volumes on English literature comprise half of the papers. The papers also include a small quantity of family papers relating to Phelps's father and wife.
The William Lyon Phelps papers at the Beinecke Library contain correspondence, writings, and other materials documenting the life and work of American author, critic, and long-time Yale professor William Lyon Phelps. The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence to Phelps from contemporaries from the first half of the Twentieth century, including well-known authors and literary critics. Other materials include a large group of outgoing letters from Phelps to Ralph T. Catterall and notes, drafts, and cancelled pages to Phelps's Autobiography With Letters (1939).
The author of twenty-nine books for children and young adults, Mr. MacKellar also taught courses in creative writing and conducted many literary workshops. The collection contains illustrations, dummies and manuscripts associated with four titles. Mr. MacKellar also donated a signifcant number of his books.
The collection consists of correspondence, writings, and drawings by or related to William Makepeace Thackeray. Correspondence includes letters written by Thackeray to colleagues such as Connop Thirlwall and William Webb Follett Synge, and letters to Thackeray from potential conributors to Cornhill Magazine. Writings include an autograph manuscript of a chapter of The Adventures of Philip, an autograph poem parodying Goethe's Werther, and an autograph manuscript notebook with memoranda, drawings, and quotations from American history, used by Thackeray while writing The Virginians. Also present are sixteen sketches in watercolor and graphite by Thackeray, two groups of ink illustrations for Thackeray's writings by John Priestman Atkinson, and a portrait of Thackeray by an unidentified artist.
William Manchester (1922-2004) was a noted author of eighteen books and dozens of articles. His first book, Disturber of the Peace, was a biography of H.L. Mencken published in 1951. Manchester wrote three novels during the 1950s, after which he published A Rockefeller Family Portrait in 1959, based on a series of magazine articles on John D. Rockefeller and the two generations that followed him. Manchester wrote one more novel before returning to non-fiction in 1962 with Portrait of a President, a study of John F. Kennedy. Manchester suddenly rose to national prominence in 1964 when Jacqueline Kennedy selected him to write the authorized account of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Robert F. Kennedy was also closely associated with the project. Two years later, Mrs. Kennedy sued Manchester to prevent its publication, setting off a controversy that played out on the front pages of newspapers around the world. Following a settlement, The Death of a President was published in 1967. With his reputation established, Manchester steadily published works of non-fiction: The Arms of Krupp (1968) chronicled the German munitions family; The Glory and the Dream (1974) provided an analysis of American history, 1932-1973; Controversy and Other Essays in Journalism (1976) included Manchester's own account of the Death controversy; American Caesar (1978) profiled Gen. Douglas McArthur; Goodbye, Darkness (1980) was Manchester's memoir of his World War II Pacific combat experiences; The Last Lion (1983 and 1988), a two-volume biography of Winston Churchill; and A World Lit Only By Fire (1992), an overview of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Manchester was associated with Wesleyan University for more than 40 years, first as an editor for American Education Publications (the publisher of My Weekly Reader and other periodicals formerly owned by the University) starting in 1955, and later as a writer-in-residence and adjunct professor.