Scope and Contents
This collection consists of correspondence, writings, personal papers, scrapbooks, printed material, artwork, computer disks, audio tapes, and video tapes documenting the life and writing career of David Leavitt, spanning from 1935 to 2015.
Dates
- 1935 - 2015
Creator
Conditions Governing Access
The materials are open for research.
Boxes 18, 45, 58 (computer disks): Restricted Fragile Material. Reference copies of electronic files may be requested. Consult Access Services for further information.
Boxes 42, 59, and 74 (audiovisual material): Restricted fragile material. Reference copies may be requested. Consult Access Services for further information.
Box 73 (electronic media): Restricted fragile material. Reference copies may be requested. Consult Access Services for further information.
Box 46: Restricted Fragile Material. Reference surrogates have been substituted in the main files. For further information consult the appropriate curator.
Conditions Governing Use
The David Leavitt 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
June 1998 Acquisitions: purchased from James S. Jaffe on the Ezra Pound Archive Fund and Adele Gutman Nathan Theatrical Collection Fund, 1998.
March 2002 Acquisition: purchased from James S. Jaffe on the Eugene G. O'Neill Memorial Fund, 2002.
May 2006 Acquisition: purchased from James S. Jaffe on the Donald Windham-Sandy Campbell Collection Endowment Fund, 2006.
December 2014 Acquisition: purchased from James S. Jaffe on the Sinclair Lewis Fund, 2014.
May 2016 Acquisition: purchased from David Leavitt on the Edwin J. Beinecke Book Fund, 2016.
Arrangement
Organized into five groupings: June 1998 Acquisitions; March 2002 Acquisition; May 2006 Acquisition; December 2014 Acquisition; and May 2016 Acquisition.
Material within this collection has been organized by acquisition reflecting the fact that the collection has been acquired in increments over time.
Researchers should note that material within each acquisition overlaps with and/or relates to material found in other acquisitions. For instance, writings can be found in all three groupings. In order to locate all relevant material within this collection, researchers will need to consult each acquisition described in the Collection Contents section.
Researchers should also note that similar material can be arranged differently in each acquisition, depending on how the material was organized when it was received by the library.
Extent
56.72 Linear Feet ((74 boxes) + 1 roll)
Language of Materials
English
Catalog Record
A record for this collection is available in Orbis, the Yale University Library catalog
Persistent URL
Abstract
This collection consists of correspondence, writings, personal papers, scrapbooks, printed material, artwork, computer disks, audio tapes, and videotapes documenting the life and writing career of David Leavitt, spanning from 1935 to 2015.
David Leavitt
David Leavitt is an American writer who was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on June 23, 1961, and graduated from Yale in 1983. Leavitt is known as a leader in the American gay literature movement, and has been nominated for and awarded prizes including the Willets Prize for fiction (1982) and the O. Henry Award (1984).
His major works include Family Dancing (1984), The Lost Language of Cranes (1986), Equal Affections (1989), A Place I've Never Been (1990), While England Sleeps (1993), Arkansas (1997), The Page Turner (1998), Martin Bauman: Or, A Sure Thing (2000), The Marble Quilt (2001), Florence, a Delicate Case (2002), The Body of Jonah Boyd (2004), The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer (2005), and The Indian Clerk (2007). He also co-authored or edited a number of books with Mark Mitchell, including Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories (1994), Italian Pleasures (1996), Pages Passed from Hand to Hand: The Hidden Tradition of Homosexual Literature in English from 1748 to 1914 (1997), E.M. Forster, Selected Stories (2001), In Maremma: Life and a House in Southern Tuscany (2001). He has also contributed to periodicals including Esquire, Harper's, New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, New York Times Magazine, and Village Voice.
Processing Information
This collection received a basic level of processing, including rehousing and in some instances minimal organization. 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.
The finding aid for this collection is compiled from individual preliminary lists for each acquisition that were created at or around the time of receipt by the library. The preliminary lists were migrated to comply with current archival descriptive standards and merged into a single file in 2007-2008. As part of the migration, modifications were made to the formatting of individual lists; however, the content of the lists was neither modified nor verified.
As a rule, descriptive information found in the Collection Contents section is drawn in large part 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 initial processing.
This finding aid may be updated periodically to account for new acquisitions to the collection and/or revisions in arrangement and description.
- Title
- Guide to the David Leavitt Papers
- Author
- by Beinecke staff
- Date
- 2007-05-16
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description note
- Finding aid written in English.
Part of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Repository
Location
121 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06511
Opening Hours
Access Information
The Beinecke Library is open to all Yale University students and faculty, and visiting researchers whose work requires use of its special collections. You will need to bring appropriate photo ID the first time you register. Beinecke is a non-circulating, closed stack library. Paging is done by library staff during business hours. You can request collection material online at least two business days in advance of your visit, using the request links in Archives at Yale. For more information, please see Planning Your Research Visit and consult the Reading Room Policies prior to visiting the library.