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/mm82022491
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 papers of Philip Roth, author and educator, were given to the Library of Congress by Roth in 1969. Additional material received from 1977 to 2005 was included in a purchase agreement of 2000.
The papers of Philip Roth were organized and described in 2005. The finding aid was revised in 2013.
A description of the Roth Papers appears in
Video and audio recordings have been transferred to the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division where they are identified as part of these papers.
Copyright in the unpublished writings of Philip Roth in these papers and in other collections in the custody of the Library of Congress is reserved. Consult a reference librarian in the Manuscript Division for further information.
The papers of Philip Roth are open to research. Researchers are advised to contact the Manuscript Reading Room prior to visiting. Many collections are stored off-site and advance notice is needed to retrieve these items for research use.
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container number, Philip Roth Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The papers of Philip Milton Roth (1933- ) span the years 1938-2001, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1960-1999. The collection represents Roth's literary career during the twentieth century and is organized in the following series: Correspondence File , Writings File , Miscellany , and Oversize .
The Correspondence File primarily contains letters received with a few copies of Roth's replies. The list of correspondents consists chiefly of writers, editors, publishers, poets, artists, academics, actors, playwrights, and literary agents. Many letters include commentaries regarding drafts of Roth's work and illustrate his practice of circulating early versions for review by other writers, friends, and editors. Letters from editors and agents, including Aaron Asher, Candida Donadio, Tom Maschler, George Starbuck, and Roger W. Straus, Jr., reveal Roth's involvement in the editorial and production process of his work. Correspondents also write about their own work and activities, other writers, literary issues, political and social issues, family, and mutual friends. Although most correspondents are American, letters from English writers, actors, and others reflect Roth's intermittent work and residence in London. English correspondents include actress Claire Bloom, to whom Roth was married, Joan Aiken, Angela Carter, Hermione Lee, and Harold Pinter.
Letters in both the Correspondence and the Writings files document the various reactions evoked by Roth's writings examining and depicting the evolving condition of the Jewish community in the United States. Other Jewish writers represented include Saul Bellow, Yaël Dayan, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, and Bernard Malamud. Roth's annual retreats to the Yaddo Artist's Colony in the 1960s and 1970s are reflected in letters from Elizabeth Ames, Pauline Hanson, and Curtis Harnack. Roth founded and was general editor of the Writers from the Other Europe series for Penguin Books in the 1970s and 1980s, promoting and publishing writers from Eastern and Central Europe, such as Ivan Klíma, Milan Kundera, Norman Manea, and Josef Škvorecký whose letters are among Roth's correspondence.
Other individuals represented in the Correspondence File include James Atlas, R. S. Baker, Anita Brookner, Robert Sanford Brustein, R. V. Cassill, Blair Clark, Joanna Rostropowicz Clark, Joel Conarroe, Robert Crichton, Judith Dunford, Paul Engle, Blair Fuller, Veronica Geng, Philip Grausman, Philip Guston, Michael Herr, L. Rust Hills, Edward Hoagland, Susan Jacoby, R. B. Kitaj, Alan Lelchuk, Alison Lurie, Janet Malcolm, Jerre Gerlando Mangione, Mildred Martin, Jonathan Evan Maslow, Charlotte Maurer, Robert E. Maurer, Jack Miles, Ross Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, Edna O'Brien, Cynthia Ozick, David Plante, Deborah Rogers, Thomas Rogers, Herman Schneider, Howard Stein, Richard G. Stern, William Styron, Judith Thurman, Melvin Marvin Tumin, John Updike, Fredrica Wagman, and John Wheatcroft.
The Writings File contains material related to Roth's books, essays, stories, reviews, plays, screenplays, letters to editors, and transcripts of interviews and discussions. The books file constitutes the bulk of the material and includes working texts from various stages of production for all of Roth's fiction and nonfiction books published before 2000, including
Essays, reviews, and stories are grouped together in the Writings File . Most titles include annotated typed drafts, notes, and galleys. Unpublished and unproduced play scripts and screenplays are also in the Writings File, including “A Coffin in Egypt,” “Buried Alive,” and “The Nice Jewish Boy.” The file contains Larry Arrick's adaptation of three Roth stories and Roth's revised version of Anton Chekov's
The collection is arranged in four series:
Catalog Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/mm82022491
Primarily letters and electronic faxes received.
Arranged alphabetically by name of person, organization, or topic and thereunder chronologically.
Original typed drafts, revised versions, printers' galleys and proofs from various stages of production, and ancillary notes, correspondence, and research material for books, stories, essays, plays, and interviews.
Arranged alphabetically by type of work and title and thereunder by sequence of production primarily as described by Roth.
Appointment books, blueprints, clippings, photographs, and printed matter.
Arranged alphabetically by type of material and thereunder chronologically.
Correspondence, book drafts, and blueprints.
Arranged and described according to the series, containers, and folders from which the items were removed.