Vincent McHugh papers

Collection

Call Number: YCAL MSS 631

Scope and Contents

The Vincent McHugh Papers document the professional and personal life of poet, novelist, and editor Vincent McHugh. The papers consist of personal and professional correspondence, drafts of writings, professional papers, journals, notebooks, personal papers, photographs, sound recordings, drawings, and a scrapbook, spanning the years 1933 to 1983.

Dates

circa 1933-1983

Creator

McHugh, Vincent, 1904-1983

Language

English

Conditions Governing Access

The materials are open for research.

Box 68 (reel-to-reel audio tapes): Restricted fragile material. Reference copies may be requested. Consult Access Services for further information.

Box 69 (audiocassettes): Use of originals is restricted. Reference copies may be requested. Consult Access Services for further information.

Conditions Governing Use

The Vincent McHugh Papers is the physical property of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the appropriate curator.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Purchased from Serendipity Books on the The Bradford F. and Lila L. Swan Fund and Sinclair Lewis Fund, 2002; Gift of Patricia McHugh, 2003 and 2005.

Arrangement

Organized into three groupings: I. March 2002 Acquisition, 1933-1983. II. October 2003 Acquisition, 1949-1978. III. July 2005 Acquisition, 1963.

Extent

58.93 Linear Feet (72 boxes)

Catalog Record

A record for this collection is available in Orbis, the Yale University Library catalog

Persistent URL

http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/beinecke.mchugh

Additional Description

Overview

Vincent McHugh (1904-1983)

Vincent McHugh was an American poet, novelist, and editor. He served as editor-in-chief and Technical Director of the New York office of the Federal Writers Project during the Depression, was a staff writer for The New Yorker in the late 1930's and was a writer-director for the Office of War Information Films. He published five novels, including The Victory (1947), I am Thinking of My Darling (1943), and Caleb Catlum’s America (1936). His published poetry collections include Alpha: The Mutabilities (1958); The Blue Hen's Chickens, Poems, Verses, Blues (1947); and Old Friends from Far Away (1980), an English translation of classical Mandarin poems. He was married to Patricia McHugh and had no children.

Processing Information

Former call numbers: Uncat MSS 247, Uncat MSS 586 and Uncat Za File 699.

Collections are processed to a variety of levels, depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived research value, the availability of staff, competing priorities, and whether or not further accruals are expected. The library attempts to provide a basic level of preservation and access for all collections, and does more extensive processing of higher priority collections as time and resources permit.

The collection received preliminary processing at the time of acquisition. Further organization, rehousing, and description were carried out in 2012. Various acquisitions associated with the collection have not been merged and organized as a whole. Each acquisition is described separately in the contents list below, identified by a unique call number and titled according to month and year of acquisition.

Information included in the Description of Papers note and Collection Contents section is drawn from information supplied with the collection and from an initial survey of the contents. Folder titles appearing in the contents list below are often based on those provided by the creator or previous custodian. Titles have not been verified against the contents of the folders in all cases. Otherwise, folder titles are supplied by staff during basic processing.

This finding aid may be updated periodically to account for new acquisitions to the collection and/or revisions in arrangement and description.