Yale Review records

The Yale Review Records: 1911-1949 consist primarily of business correspondence between the first two editors of The Yale Review, Wilbur L. Cross and Helen MacAfee, and writers whose works appeared in the periodical during their tenures. The collection has been organized into one series, Correspondence, arranged alphabetically by author; "letter general" files, which as a rule contain correspondents represented by relatively few items, precede the individual files under each letter. The records span the years 1911-1959, with the bulk of the material dating from between 1925 and 1940.

Series I, Correspondence , is housed in boxes 1-13 and contains letters from contributors and potential contributors to the magazine, accompanied by retained carbons of letters by Cross and MacAfee. Occasional third party correspondence from literary agents or translators with the editors has been filed with the writer's correspondence. Typical subjects include: solicitations and offers of articles on specific topics, discussion of the magazine's low payment rates, suggestions for editorial changes, and comment on the magazine's quality and contents. Some letters also contain personal and family news, literary opinions, and sometimes lengthy discussions of current events and economic concerns such as a proposed nationalization of the power industry in the United States or the effect of offyear elections on foreign relations and monetary policy.

Several files also contain manuscripts and proofs of submissions, including poems by Stephen Vincent Benét, Walter De La Mare, Robert Frost, John Masefield, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Allen Tate; articles by Clemence Dane, E.M. Forster, Stephen Grahame, Harold Laski, Sean O'Faolain, George Santayana, and H. G. Wells; and book reviews by Charles Morgan, Ida B. Tarbell and Rebecca West. In many cases, the manuscripts and proofs are principal subjects of the correspondence, as the authors and editors discuss the works and the publication process; in others, these items appear to be unconnected to the surviving correspondence, or are entirely unaccompanied by letters. These materials have been identified in folder notes.