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Correspondence, manuscripts, memorabilia, photographs, phonograph and tape recordings, and printed files. Included are Cerf's personal correspondence files, 1929-1945, and the diaries and scrapbooks which he maintained from his school days throughout his active career. The diaries, in date-book format, contain terse notes on Cerf's meetings with authors and friends, on his travels and publishing activities; the scrapbooks contain correspondence and photographs, as well as memorabilia and printed items, and were annotated by Cerf and his wife, Phyllis Fraser Cerf Wagner. Also in the collection are manuscripts and proofs for Cerf's books including "The Laugh's on Me""Treasury of Atrocious Puns""The Sound of Laughter""Stories to Make You Feel Better", and "At Random: the Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf", which was edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner and Albert Erskine, 1977. The papers also include condolence letters written at the time of Cerf's death, photographs and photo albums,certificates and awards, and miscellaneous printed material, including Random House and Modern Library catalogues. Among the major correspondents are: Truman Capote, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Edna Ferber, Moss Hart, J. Edgar Hoover, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon B. Johnson, John Lindsay, Joshua Logan, John O'Hara, Jacqueline Onassis, Richard Rodgers, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gertrude Stein, Adlai Stevenson, Harry Truman, and Robert Penn Warren

Correspondence, manuscripts, dispatches, documents, clippings and other printed materials concerning his career as an editor and correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in Moscow, Berlin and New York, as a staff member of the Institute of Pacific Relations from 1932 to 1934, as deputy director in the Office of War Information overseas branch, 1941-44, as an owner and editor of the New York Star, 1948-49, as an instructor in communications at Sarah Lawrence College, 1950-1951, as a book editor at Simon and Schuster, Publishers, 1951-1970, and as an author and translator.

The collection consists of the editorial and production archives of Vanguard Press: correspondence, manuscripts, contracts, memoranda, galley proofs, photographs, clippings, and printed materials. The correspondence and editorial files contain a wealth of detailed information about individual authors and the growth and development of the Press. Among the cataloged correspondents are: Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Stephen Vincent Benét, William Rose Benét; Phyllis Bottome; Pierre Boulle; Jocelyn Brooke; Cyril Connolly; A.J. Cronin; Nigel Dennis; John Dewey; Max Eastman; James T. Farrell; Vardis Fisher; Richard Garnett; Theodor Seuss Geisel; Louis Golding; Paul Goodman; Horace Gregory; Geoffrey Grigson; Lillian Hellman; William Heyen; Harold L. Ickes; Christopher Isherwood; Alfred Kazin; Philip Lamantia; Sinclair Lewis; Emanuel Litvinoff; Dwight Macdonald; Archibald MacLeish; Marshall McLuhan; Thomas Mann; Edgar Lee Masters; H. L. Mencken; William Meredith; Joyce Carol Oates; Katherine Anne Porter; Barbara Pym; William Sansom; William Saroyan; Ramon J. Sender; Upton Sinclair; Rex Stout; Edith Sitwell; Paul Theroux; Lionel Trilling; Harry S. Trumam; Louis Untermeyer; Eudora Welty; Richard Wilbur; and Thornton Wilder. There are some manuscripts by Bellow; Bottome; Boulle; Farrell; Grigson; Litvinoff; MacDonald; Oates; John Cowper Powys; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.; Patrick Tanner; William Targ; Theroux; and Sitwell.