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

The papers consist of material created and accumulated by James Lapine in the course of his creative and professional activities as a playwright and director. Material includes scripts, production notes and files, correspondence, writings, printed material, audiovisual material, and photographs documenting Lapine's work on individual plays and productions, and the process of bringing a play or musical to the stage.

The collection, a part of the William A. Speck Collection of Goetheana, consists of correspondence, documents, playscripts, and other writings by or relating to Goethe and his work. The major strength of the manuscript collection is its documentation of Goethe's literary reception in England and America in the nineteenth century. There are 25 letters and manuscripts in Goethe's hand, and several Faust-related items. Authors represented prominently besides Goethe include Thomas Carlyle, Frank Claudy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Faust collector Georg Ehrhardt, Walther Wolfgang von Goethe, August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, University of Illinois professor Julius Goebel, Anna Jameson, Johann Caspar Lavater, Friederich von Müller, Henry Crabb Robinson, Friedrich Schiller, Carl Frederick Schreiber, Horatio Robinson Storer, Bayard Taylor, Marie (Hansen) Taylor, Karl August Ludwig Philipp Varnhagen von Ense, and Albert Wünsch.

Manuscripts, letters, and research material document the life of best-selling novelist Hamilton Basso.

The papers of Lee Friedlander include photographs, correspondence, work files, book projects, printed materials, awards, objects, audiovisual materials, and computer disks documenting his career as a photographer, including his work process, exhibitions, publications, business activities, and honors. Photographs include color slide portraits of musicians; black and white slides; exhibition prints of western landscapes; and work prints corresponding to exhibition prints held by the Beinecke Library, Yale University, and the Yale University Art Gallery. The collection also includes personal papers documenting his relationships with family and friends, in particular his wife Maria Friedlander.

The Basil Davenport Papers consist chiefly of correspondence, including a substantial number of outgoing letters from Davenport to his family. The collection also contains Davenport's diaries, drafts of his writings and translations, printed material documenting his career and critical work, and personal papers including genealogical material.

This collection consists of photographs and papers that document the work of David Plowden as a photographer and author, 1948-2011. The photographic work in the collection records scenes from main streets and churches in small towns to barns and grain elevators in farmlands, as well as industrial cityscapes of cities like Chicago, Illinois, and New York City. The images also document railroads and their infrastructures, as well as bridges and canals throughout the United States and Canada, and maritime vessels, such as tugboats, steamboats, and ferries, which use the North American rivers, lakes, and harbors. A group of photographs also document sites related to Abraham Lincoln, which Plowden used in his work, Lincoln and His America (New York: Viking Press, 1970).

The George W. Wilbur Family Papers consist of correspondence, case files, financial papers, notebooks, documents, writings, diaries, maps, photographs, and printed material which document the life of George W. Wilbur and his family.

The Eugene O'Neill Papers document the life of dramatist Eugene O'Neill, especially his life with Carlotta Monterey O'Neill after 1928. Correspondents include O'Neill's lawyers, Harry Weinberger and Winfield E. Aronberg; his agent, the Richard J. Madden Play Company, Inc.; friends and colleagues; and family members, including his daughter, Oona, his sons, Shane and Eugene, Jr., his third wife, Carlotta, and her daughter, Cynthia Chapman Stram.
The collection also contains Carlotta's correspondence after O'Neill's death. There is correspondence with her lawyers at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft and at Nutter, McClennen & Fish; the Yale Library system regarding her gift of O'Neill's papers; biographers of O'Neill; others concerning her work on the production and publication of O'Neill's plays; and friends and family members. There are also letters from former husband Ralph Barton before she married O'Neill.
Writings include notes, outlines and plot summaries, drafts (typescript and holograph), proofs, contracts, programs, and clippings for many of O'Neill's plays. There are some poems and other writings, as well as his work diaries, in which he documented his writing schedule from 1924 to 1943. There are also some works by others about O'Neill's life and writing.
The personal papers include address books, membership certificates, awards for O'Neill's writing, Carlotta's diaries from 1928 to 1964, clippings and ephemera about friends and relatives, and financial material, including cancelled checks and checkbooks. The photographs document O'Neill, his family members, friends, colleagues, pets, and places where he lived and visited. Some of the photographs are in albums. There are also photographs of productions of his plays, from 1916 to 1966. The memorabilia includes office materials, writing tools, jewelry, and locks of hair, among other items. Artists represented in the collection include Cyrus Leroy Baldridge, Miguel Covarrubias, Alfred Joseph Frueh, and Robert Edmond Jones. Some of the artworks are portraits of O'Neill; others pertain to his plays; others were given to, or collected by, the O'Neills. The recordings (all after O'Neill's death) include three recordings of O'Neill plays and one tribute to O'Neill.