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MacLeish, Archibald, 1892-1982

 Person

Dates

  • Existence: 1892 - 1982

Archibald MacLeish, poet, playwright, and government official, was born on May 7, 1892, in Glencoe, Illinois. He graduated from Yale in 1915, entered Harvard Law School, and married Ada Hitchcock in 1916. After the United States entered World War I, he enlisted as a private in the army, served in the artillery in France, and was discharged with the rank of captain. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1919 and the next year joined the Boston law firm of Choate, Hall, and Stewart. In 1923 the MacLeish family moved to Paris, where they remained for five years. After returning to the United States, he travelled to Mexico to follow the route of Cortez's army in preparation for writing Conquistador.

During the 1930s MacLeish was an editor of Fortune magazine. He served as Librarian of Congress, 1939-44, Assistant Secretary of State for Public and Cultural Affairs, 1944-45, and Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Poetry at Harvard University, 1949-62. MacLeish's poetry and dramatic writings earned him Pulitizer Prizes in 1932, 1952, and 1959, the Bollingen Prize and the National Book Award for poetry in 1953, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, and the National Medal for Literature in 1978. Archibald MacLeish died in Boston on April 20, 1982.

His major works of poetry include Tower of Ivory (1917), The Pot of Earth (1925), The Hamlet of A. MacLeish (1928), New Found Land (1930), Conquistador (1932), America Was Promises (1939), Collected Poems, 1917-1952 (1952), and Songs for Eve (1954). MacLeish also wrote several plays, some of the most important being Panic (1935), The Fall of the City (1937), Air Raid (1938), J.B. (1958), Herakles (1967), and Scratch (1971). Counted among his works of prose are A Time to Speak (1941), The American Story (1944), Poetry and Experience, (1960), and A Continuing Journey (1968).

Found in 17 Collections and/or Records:

Bangs family papers

 Collection
Call Number: YCAL MSS 47
Overview: Scrapbooks, manuscripts, diaries. letters, and personal papers documenting the lives and careers of American humorist John Kendrick Bangs and his son, Francis Hyde Bangs.
Dates: 1881-1964

Stephen Vincent Benét and Rosemary Benét papers

 Collection
Call Number: YCAL MSS 1046
Scope and Contents: The Stephen Vincent Benét and Rosemary Benét papers consist of correspondence, manuscripts, printed material, and personal and family papers documenting the life and work of American authors Stephen Vincent Benét and Rosemary Benét. The collection spans the years 1829 to 1962, with the bulk of the collection dating from roughly 1910 to 1943.

Collection material is chiefly in English; with some material in French, German, Polish, and Swedish.
Dates: 1829-1962, bulk 1920-1943

Mina Kirstein Curtiss papers

 Collection
Call Number: YCAL MSS 14
Overview: The papers consist of personal and professional correspondence.
Dates: 1917-1966 (inclusive)

James Joseph Daly papers

 Collection
Call Number: YCAL MSS 649
Overview: Collection contains correspondence, writings, and personal papers documenting the life and professional activity of poet and playwright James Joseph Daly. Correspondence in the collection consists chiefly of incoming correspondence from writers, journal editors, publishers, and others, but also includes drafts and carbons of outgoing letters and writings and enclosures. Correspondents include Elizabeth Ames at Yaddo, Kenneth Burke, John Cheever, Padraic Colum, Malcolm Cowley at The New...
Dates: 1916-1949

John Sylvester Fischer papers

 Collection
Call Number: MS 850
Overview: Family and general correspondence, subject files, writings, diaries and memorabilia. The general correspondence makes up nearly half the papers, documenting Fischer's professional career. As editor of Harper's Magazine (1935-1967) with time out as an editor of Harper & Brothers (1947-1953) he numbered many prominent writers among his correspondents. Notable are Bruce Catton, Norman Cousins, Ralph Ellison, Malcolm Foster, John Kenneth Galbraith, John...
Dates: 1907-1980

Robert Fitzgerald papers

 Collection
Call Number: YCAL MSS 222
Overview: Series I, Correspondence, consists chiefly of incoming personal and professional correspondence and family correspondence. The collection is particularly rich for its correspondence with poets, editors, translators, publishers, and literary scholars and critics during the middle part of the 20th century. There are letters from many well-known poets writing in English during this period, including W.H. Auden, John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Bogan, James Dickey, T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney,...
Dates: 1892-1986

Jerome New Frank papers

 Collection
Call Number: MS 222
Overview: The papers consist of correspondence, legal material (including opinions, decisions, calendars, memoranda, and other papers), writings, speeches, Yale course materials, and family and personal papers of Jerome N. Frank, lawyer, government official during the New Deal, author, legal philosopher, teacher, and federal judge. The papers reflect Frank's wide range of activities, interests, and associations, and include important correspondence with many well known government officials, lawyers,...
Dates: 1918-1972, bulk 1929-1957

Furioso papers

 Collection
Call Number: YCAL MSS 75
Overview: The Furioso papers consist of correspondence, manuscripts of submissions, editorial board files, and other office files relating to the publishing history of Furioso; a Magazine of Verse (1939-1953). Correspondents include E. E. Cummings, Richard Eberhart, Weldon Kees, Lawrence Olson, Ezra Pound, Peter Viereck, and William Carlos Williams. Manuscripts are primarily typescripts and setting typescripts of submissions to Furioso. The office files include advertising and publicity material, the...
Dates: 1938-1951

Victor Jeremy Jerome papers

 Collection
Call Number: MS 589
Overview: Correspondence, writings, research notes, biographical material, obituaries and eulogies, and other personal and family papers of Victor J. Jerome, American communist, writer, editor of Political Affairs, and political activist. The bulk of the papers relate primarily to Jerome's activities with the American Communist Party during the period from 1930 to 1965. Of special interest is correspondence relating to Jerome's trial and conviction for violation of the Smith Act (1952); correspondence...
Dates: 1923-1967

Alvin Saunders Johnson papers

 Collection
Call Number: MS 615
Overview: The papers consist of correspondence, writings, notes, clippings and photographs of Alvin Saunders Johnson. Although records relating to his career are relatively scanty, two manuscript drafts of his autobiography, Pioneer Progress, are among the writings. The correspondence of some 1,700 letters includes: Max Ascoli, Jacob Billikopf, Gerhard Colm, Agnes DeLima, Thomas E. Dewey, Eduard Heinmann, Edith Johnson, Corliss Lamont, Adolphe Lowe, Thomas Mann, Harry Scherman.
Dates: 1902-1969

Max Lerner papers

 Collection
Call Number: MS 322
Overview: The papers consist of correspondence, speeches, writings, and other papers, (including research and teaching materials, photographs, memorabilia, newspaper and periodical clippings, books, and radio and television tapes) of Max Lerner, an American educator, author, lecturer, historian, and political scientist. The papers focus on Lerner's public life and career with very little material on his personal or family life. The papers document Lerner's close association with Justice Felix Frankfurter...
Dates: 1927-1998

Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis Papers

 Collection
Call Number: LWL MSS 20
Overview: The Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis Papers consists of correspondence, writings, financial records, and other papers documenting the personal and professional activities and interests of the American author, editor, and collector Wilmarth Lewis and his wife Annie Burr Lewis. At their home in Farmington, Connecticut, the Lewises created a world-renowned collection of eighteenth-century print, graphic, and manuscript material related to the English author, connoisseur, and collector Horace Walpole...
Dates: 1800-1980, bulk 1926-1979

Anne Morrow Lindbergh papers

 Collection
Call Number: MS 829
Overview: The papers consist of correspondence, diaries, writings, childhood, school and college materials, housekeeping and social records, reports, memoranda and correspondence from the many organizations in which Anne Morrow Lindbergh took an active interest. Also included are voluminous mail from members of her reading public and memorabilia, both objects sent by admirers and items collected by her on her travels. The death of Charles Lindbergh in 1974 is documented by mail from friends, members of...
Dates: 1906-1997

Archibald MacLeish collection

 Collection
Call Number: YCAL MSS 38
Overview: The collection contains writings, correspondence, a handful of personal papers, and a songbook. The bulk of the material consists of drafts of such works as Songs for Eve (1954), The Wild Old Wicked Men & Other Poems (1968), The American Bell (1962), Herakles (1967), J. B. , and A Continuing Journey (1968).
Dates: 1914-1982 (inclusive)

Archibald MacLeish Collection Addition

 Collection
Call Number: YCAL MSS 269
Overview: The Archibald MacLeish Collection Addition consists of material related to the life and career of the American poet Archibald MacLeish received by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library after the processing of the Archibald MacLeish Collection acquired in 1976. The Addition consists of correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, personal papers, and sound recordings documenting MacLeish and his family between 1801 and 1995.
Dates: 1801-1995

Myers family papers

 Collection
Call Number: YCAL MSS 27
Overview: The papers contain correspondence with family, friends, and acquaintances, plus a variety of personal papers, including obituaries, letters of sympathy, diaries, and scrapbooks documenting the lives of Richard E. and Alice Lee Myers and their children. Prominent correspondents include Stephen Vincent Benét, Nadia Boulanger, Grace Flandrau, John Gielgud, Charlotte Kett, Archibald MacLeish, and Gerald Murphy.
Dates: 1908-1986

Robert Penn Warren papers

 Collection
Call Number: YCAL MSS 51
Overview: The papers consist of drafts of manuscripts and related material, correspondence, photographs, and newspaper clippings documenting Warren's life from his undergraduate years until his death in 1989.
Dates: 1906-1989