Converted to EAD3 : Encoded Archival Description (EAD), Version 3 : Release: 1.1.1 : Release Date: 2019-12-16. Validating against latest version of schema.
Contact information: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mss.contact
Catalog Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/mm78024968
Collection material in English
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the LC Catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically.
The records of
The records of
The status of copyright in the unpublished and published writings of
The records of
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container number, Harper's Magazine Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The records of
The collection has been processed in two parts. Part I is a chronological file that includes correspondence, drafts of articles, and business records arranged by year and thereunder by document type. Part II is arranged in three series: Editors' File , Office File , and Production File . The Editors' File includes the records of editors-in-chief John Fischer, Willie Morris, and Robert Shnayerson and the records of managing and assistant editors, 1944-1979. The Office File contains general correspondence, 1961-1971; reports on letters to the editor, 1969-1981; letters to the editor, principally from September 1981 to January 1983; and a subject file of business and personnel records. Material transferred from Yale University includes nineteenth century documents, 1848-1900, and business records, 1925-1965, that have been incorporated in the Office File . The Production File contains drafts, galleys, and other pre-publication records for some issues of the magazine, 1960-1965, and most issues, 1966-1974, 1976-1977.
One of the most successful of the serious general periodicals,
In 1925, editors shifted the emphasis of
In the 1950s and early 1960s, editor John Fischer moved the magazine toward concern for social and economic problems. Records pertaining to Fischer's editorship can be found in both Part I and Part II of the collection. Fischer's files begin in 1953 in the chronological files of Part I. His records in Part II are divided among the Editors' File , the Office File , and the Production File . Under his leadership,
In Part I, manuscripts of articles and stories are organized by the year and month they were published. In Part II, they are in the Production File where they are also organized chronologically by the year and month of publication. American contributors represented in the files from the 1950s and early 1960s include Dean Acheson, William Faulkner, John Kenneth Galbraith, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, Arthur M. Schlesinger (1917- ), James Thurber, Barbara Wertheim Tuchman, E. B. White, and Thornton Wilder along with international writers Kingsley Amis, W. H. Auden, Winston Churchill, Roald Dahl, Anthony Eden, E. M. Forster, John Fowles, Robert Graves, W. Somerset Maugham, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Bernard Shaw. Correspondence with these contributors in Part II is in the Editors' File and Office File series.
As the 1960s continued, the magazine market changed and
Manuscripts in the Production File for other stories and poems published in the 1960s include contributions by John Ashbery, Maxine Kumin, Bernard Malamud, Larry McMurtry, Walker Percy, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Isaac Bashevis Singer, John Updike, and Robert Penn Warren. Articles on the Vietnam War were written by David Halberstam, Seymour M. Hersh, and Neil Sheehan. Correspondence and other records pertaining to these contributors is found throughout the Editors' File and Office File series.
Editors Robert Shnayerson and Lewis Lapham continued to publish prominent authors. Manuscripts in the Production File for articles, stories, and poems published in the 1970s include contributions by Maya Angelou, Saul Bellow, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, E. L. Doctorow, R. Buckminster Fuller, James Jones, George S. McGovern, Arthur Miller, Bill D. Moyers, Daniel P. Moynihan, Joyce Carol Oates, Adrienne Rich, Philip Roth, Bayard Rustin, William Saroyan, Mark Strand, Paul Theroux, Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Walker, Garry Wills, and Tom Wolfe. The international group includes Simone de Beauvoir, Jorge Luis Borges, Albert Camus, Gabriel García Márquez, Nadine Gordimer, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Jessica Mitford, Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, and Igor Stravinsky. Despite the prestige of its contributors, however,
The records of
The collection is arranged in two parts containing four series:
Part I:
Part II:
Correspondence and drafts of articles with galley and page proofs, editorial lists, and other material.
Arranged as received in a general chronological organization, with files for a given year grouped together and correspondence therein arranged alphabetically by name of correspondent. Some categories, such as "U.S. War Department censorship," "reader comment," or "suggestions," were maintained as separate files that often span several years.
Correspondence, memoranda, reports, financial records, inventories, writings, speeches, news releases, publicity photographs, graphics, and printed material.
Arranged alphabetically by name of editor, thereunder as administrative records, correspondence, and subject file. Correspondence predominates and is arranged alphabetically by name of correspondent.
General correspondence, 1961-1971, is arranged chronologically by year and thereunder alphabetically by name of correspondent. Letters to the editor and reports on such letters are arranged chronologically. A subject file of business and personnel records is arranged alphabetically by topic.
Drafts of articles, fiction, verse, and departments of the magazine, including typescripts and some edited galleys with occasional correspondence between editors and authors and critical assessments by editorial staff.
Arranged chronologically and then grouped according to the type of item as it appeared in the magazine. Material filed in the Departments section includes tables of contents, editorials, short essays, reviews, letters to the editor, notes about authors or future issues, puzzles, and other material.