Harry Roskolenko collection

The collection consists of correspondence and writings of the American writer Harry Roskolenko, spanning the years 1933-51. It is organized into two series: Correspondence and Writings.

Series I, Correspondence , is arranged alphabetically, and contains correspondence from publishers, poetry reviews and literary magazines, and many prominent American poets and other writers of the mid-twentieth century, including William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Carl Sandburg, Katherine Anne Porter, John Dos Passos, Dwight Macdonald, William Saroyan, Wallace Stevens, Cleanth Brooks, Archibald MacLeish, Lewis Mumford, John Wheelwright, Thomas Mann, and George Orwell. There are also letters from Edmund Wilson and Lionel Trilling.

Because this list was compiled from previously existing catalog cards, all correspondents are listed by name rather than by affiliation. However, the majority write on behalf of a publisher or publication. For example, James Laughlin writes as publisher of New Directions; Edmund Wilson, Bruce Bliven, and Nigel Forbes Dennis write as editors of The New Republic; and Peter DeVries, Karl Shapiro, Harriet Monroe, George Dillon and Morton Zabel all write on behalf of Poetry. Other publishers and publications represented in the correspondence are The New York Times, Houghton Mifflin, Doubleday, Henry Holt, Pulse, Common Sense, and The Sewanee Review, among others.

Series II, Writings , contains three manuscripts. These are a manuscript poem titled "Perfidious Albion!," a typescript play, Journey of Five (Of Whom Three Were One), and a typescript article, "What Poets Do For a Living (A Study of the Poet and his Predicament)," which was published in Plain Talk. The article summarizes the results of an income survey that Roskolenko sent to fellow poets in April 1949, and is accompanied by the survey response forms from twenty-two poets. These include Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, and Mark Van Doren.