Search

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, audio cassettes, photographs, and printed materials. The correspondence covers the years 1934 through 1999 and consists mostly of letters to and from James L. Weil, whose Elizabeth Press was Bronk's publisher from 1969 to 1981, from Eugene Canadé, an artist who illustrated many of Bronk's books, from Bronk's sisters, and from many friends. There are also letters from W.H. Auden; Paul Auster, Cid Corman (Bronk's first publisher and founder of ORIGIN, the magazine in which many of Bronk's early poems first appeared), Robert Creeley, Samuel French Morse, Gilbert Sorrentino, and many other well-known authors. The manuscripts include notebooks and binders containing handwritten and typed drafts of poems and essays. They document nearly all of Bronk's published writings including the collection of essays he completed in the 1940s which was published in 1980 as THE BROTHER IN ELYSIUM as well as the collection of poems published in 1981 as LIFE SUPPORTS: NEW AND COLLECTED POEMS for which Bronk won the American Books Award in 1982. There are also page proofs, photographs of Bronk, many audio cassettes of Bronk reading his work in the 1970s and the 1980s and printed materials