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Correspondence, manuscripts, and miscellany relating to the presentation of poems at a Shakespeare's Birthday Concert on 23 April 1972, by a number of British poets including W.H. Auden, C. Day Lewis, Robert Graves, and Stephen Spender. The collection consists primarily of correspondence with the poets involved; several manuscripts of poems both presented at and eliminated from the program; some business correspondence of the Globe Playhouse Trust and Calder and Boyars, Ltd., Publishers; and Hampton's notes.

The files of Curtis Brown, Ltd. literary agency include correspondence with authors, publishers, and other agents and deal with the editing and publishing of trade and textbooks, serial rights, reprints, dramatic rights, translations and foreign rights, promotion and copyright registration. For each author there are contracts, royalty statements, tax statements, and other financial materials. There is also a contract file, including cancellations and related correspondence, from 1914 to 1988. Among the cataloged correspondents are: Louis S. Auchincloss, W.H. Auden, Erle Stanley Gardner, Robert Graves, Ogden Nash, Ayn Rand, and Sloan Wilson.

Correspondence, manuscripts, and documents gathered by Carpenter in writing his W.H. AUDEN: A BIOGRAPHY, including correspondence and recollections of Auden from friends and acquaintances, and the typescript of Carpenter's first draft of the book. Correspondents include Sir Cecil Beaton, Sir Isaiah Berlin, Christopher Isherwood, Sir Peter Pears, Frederick Prokosch, Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, and Stephen Spender.

Letters, manuscripts, and books, including four letters from MacNeice to the poet and editor, Geoffrey Grigson. The manuscripts, either by or about MacNeice, include ten of his last poems. Five of these have been published in SOLSTICE, 1961, and four in THE BURNING PERCH, 1963. Drafts of the first group of poems were written in a personal notebook used by the poet while he worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation. In another similar notebook is a partial draft of his play "The Administrator." Both notebooks are in the collection. Also, an untitled, unpublished poem of seven stanzas"Tingling [born] the burning island" written on the reverse of a map. Works about NacNeice include manuscripts of a memoir and a radio portrait by Robert Pocock. The portrait has poignant comments and personal reminiscences by twenty of the poet's contemporaries, including John Betjeman, Anthony Blunt, W.H. Auden, E.R. Dodds, Stephen Spender, and others. Both Auden and a literary coterie of Spender, Betjeman, William Empson, and Cyril Connoly taped disucssions of MacNeice and his poetry. Also, thirty-eight books that were in MacNeice's personal library. Most are autographed by him, and many have marked passages and marginal notes. One of the books, Euripides' ALCESTIS AND OTHER PLAYS, is heavily annotated, apparently for a broadcast production.

The collection consists of the editorial and production archives of Random House, Inc. from its founding in 1925 to the 1990s. The correspondence and editorial files include many of the prominent novelists and short story writers from 20th-century American and European literature: Saul Bellow; Erskine Caldwell; Truman Capote; William Faulkner; Sinclair Lewis; André Malraux; Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder. Among the poets there are files for W. H. Auden; Allen Ginsberg; Robinson Jeffers; Robert Lowell; and Stephen Spender. In the area of theater there are files for Maxwell Anderson; Moss Hart; Lillian Hellman; Eugene O'Neill; and Tennessee Williams. Random House transacted business with many fine presses and noted typographers and the archives contain files for Nonesuch Press, Grabhorn Press and Golden Cockerel Press, as wll as for Bruce Rogers, Valenti Angelo, and Edwin, Jane, and Robert Grabhorn.