The David Gascoyne collection encompasses accessions of single manuscripts and groups of manuscripts pertaining to David Gascoyne acquired by gift or purchase from various sources by the Beinecke Library.
The papers span most of Gascoyne's career from 1945 onward. The material from the 1940s is primarily correspondence, notebooks and journals, while later material from the 1970s through the1990s includes sound recordings, original artwork, typescripts and other material related to publication as well as notebooks.
Gascoyne's notebooks contain diverse genres of writings including notes and drafts for correspondence, prose, poetic writing, and lists (which are often bibliographic). In addition to traditional literary genres, Gascoyne's works include collections of found images and writings. One such collection, "A Little Book of Bits and Pieces," is bound into a volume; a second comprises a planned work entitled "Works of Novalis, Translated by Various Hands."
The bulk of the correspondence in the collection relates to the editing and publishing of Gascoyne's works and to the management of his literary career, though some addresses literary and philosophical topics. Other correspondence is personal, such as Gascoyne's postcards to his parents.
The largest single accession in the collection is that of Alan Clodd, Gascoyne's agent and publisher. In addition to correspondence, notebooks, artwork, photographs and audio recordings, the Alan Clodd collection includes papers from several volumes that Clodd helped prepare for publication, including Selected Prose, Selected Verse Translations and Gascoyne's planned publication Surrealism Resurveyed.