The Manroot/Paul Mariah Collection, 1889-1996 [bulk 1966-1995], primarily covers the editorial and business records of Manroot magazine and Manroot Books; correspondence between Paul Mariah and other poets and activists; material related to Paul Mariah's personal and professional life; and material collected from gay, prison, and religious activism groups in the Bay Area and nationally. Materials include manuscripts, production material, original artwork, photographs, correspondence, newspaper clippings, ephemera, flyers, financial materials, medical records, last will and testaments, personal documents, and letterpress blocks. Of particular note is the correspondence series which is the largest at 728 folders and contains both letters sent to Mariah and Manroot, but also Mariah's carbon copy responses; material related to his work on the Kinsey Study of Deviant Socialization in San Francisco, 1969-1970; Mariah's research and notes on his Robert Duncan Bibliography; and the Robert Duncan and Society for Individual Rights material located under community involvement/gay liberation movement.

The collection is organized into seven series.

Manroot is broken up into two sub-series: Manroot Magazine and Manroot Books. The magazine contains all material clearly designated for issues one through twelve. Materials included are manuscripts, correspondence, dummies, proofs, artwork, negatives, paste-ups, and business financial material such as printer's quotes and invoices. Manroot Books is organized alphabetically by author and within each author organized alphabetically by book title. Obvious book correspondence as organized by Mariah is included in this series, but other correspondence for each author can be found in the correspondence series. Materials found in books are manuscript drafts, production material, galley proofs, artwork and photographs, notes, translations, reviews, and publicity. At the end of the Manroot series is business financial material including mailing lists, paper samples, and invoices not specified for a single book or magazine; grant applications and requirements in alphabetical order including local and national granting bodies such as California Arts Council, Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers, Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines, and National Endowment for the Arts; and letterpress blocks from Mariah's antique letterpress machine used for broadsides and hand printed books.

The correspondence series is the largest collection at 728 folders. Mariah maintained continual correspondence with many members of the poetry community, homophile community, and gay prisoners for three decades. Included in the series are letters to Mariah and Manroot and his responses in the form of carbon copies which were often stapled on top of the letter he was responding to. Also included are notes passed back and forth to roommates and colleagues, drafts never sent, photographs, clippings, manuscripts, and personal records for a few of Mariah's close friends who were under his care when they passed. Personal records include last will and testaments, medical records, identification and social security cards, and personal correspondence from family and friends to the deceased. Individuals with personal records located with their correspondence include Kenneth Poff (see Kenneth Poff series), Fred Beauregard, Hunce Voelcker, Helen Luster, Ambi Sextrous, and Lona Noble. Some restrictions may apply to these particular files, see archivist for details. Otto Stone file also contains restricted material including medical records.

Because the correspondence series is so large, it has been broken up into five sub-series based on Mariah's file labels, and within each sub-series the files are organized in rough alphabetical order with individual files for larger or more significant correspondents. The sub-series are 1) Individuals, which contains individually named persons; 2) Poetry and publishing, containing correspondence between Mariah and small presses, publishers, poetry organizations such as Russian River's Writing Guild and Los Angeles Poetry Center, and at the end of the sub-series is poetry flyers for readings and events, broadsides released by small presses, and other poetry community ephemera. 3) Bookstores and distributors contains material from bookstores and large book distributors such as R.R. Bowker; this sub-series mostly contains invoices and business correspondence with some bankruptcy paperwork from defunct bookstores. 4) Corporations and organizations include business correspondence from universities, libraries, directories, and organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Swedish Consulate, as well as larger writing organizations such as National Poetry Awards and Poets and Writers. 5) The family sub-series contains correspondence between Mariah and his mother, grandmother, siblings, and aunts, and group correspondence includes carbon copy letters addressed to multiple family members at once. Greeting cards include birthday, holiday, and anniversary cards addressed to Mariah and Ken Poff that have not been integrated into individual correspondence files to better reflect Mariah's original organization. There is some overlap in the individuals and poetry and publications sub-series that reflect Mariah's labels as well as sometimes decade-long gaps that separate personal correspondence from professional. Paul wrote extensively about his experience taking care of Ken during his five-year battle with AIDS in a large portion of the correspondence, both personal and professional in nature.

The Other work series contains two significant projects that Mariah worked on that were not related to Manroot. For approximately a decade, Mariah worked with Ray Rice to organize Robert Duncan's Bibliography, compiling more than 500 pages toward the final product that was eventually edited by Robert J. Bertholf and published by Black Sparrow Press in 1986. Material included in the Duncan Bibliography file include correspondence, copies of card catalog entries, handwritten notes, index cards bearing single entries, and articles written by Duncan. Also included in other work is material related to the Kinsey Institute's San Francisco Homosexual Study: A Study of Deviant Socialization. Materials include training material for field work and interviews; questionnaires for parents, siblings, and subjects, personal preferences, and personal adjustments; notes pertaining to cross referencing partners and roommates; correspondence and gift acknowledgement forms from Mariah's donations.

Activism and community involvement includes material related to the homophile movement/gay liberation movement, prison reform, and poetry workshops. Gay liberation sub-series contains material related to gay rights organizations from the Bay Area, California, small organizations across the United States, and national groups. Of particular note is the material related to the Society of Individual Rights (SIR). Paul Mariah was a chairman under the adviser, Robert Duncan, 1967-1972, and Manroot was born out of a SIR poetry workshop. Other organizations in this series include G40+, Gay Community Services Center, Gay Liberation Front, National Gay Task Force, Council on Religion and Homosexuality (Mariah was president, 1972), First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, Unitarian-Universalist Gay Caucus, Bay Area Comprehensive Health Planning Council, Center for Solving Special Social and Health Problems, San Francisco Association for Mental Health, and Family Services Agency of San Francisco, among others. There are also files on AIDS, gay resources, conferences and symposiums, serials, correspondence, memorabilia and ephemera, and event flyers.

The prison reform sub-series contains material related to Mariah's struggle for recognition of prisoners' rights after being released from prison in 1964. He set up correspondence outlets for gay prisoners, gave poetry readings for prisoners, wrote articles and gave lectures on prisons and sexuality and spent time in a residency program at the Academy of Prison Arts (John Paul Minarik). This series includes material related to the above mentioned, as well as correspondence from prisoners, both poetry submissions and other queries, and includes serials Connections and Amnesty International.

Paul Mariah hosted and led poetry workshops for the three decades he lived in the Bay Area. The sub-series poetry workshops contains material related to SIR poetry workshops and workshops Mariah co-led with Helen Luster in her home in Santa Rosa in the 1980s. The two folders of manuscripts from workshops contain gaps in years and material. Other workshop material may be scattered throughout Mariah's manuscript material.

Kenneth (Ken) Poff, 1937-1987, was Paul Mariah's partner of 15 years. Poff was a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars, and was discharged for homosexual activity in 1958. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, went to school in Erie, Pennsylvania, and had been a passenger agent for United Airlines for 18 years. Poff died after a long battle with AIDS. Mariah took care of Poff during his illness and their experience is well documented through correspondence, medical records, notes, and poetry throughout the correspondence sub-series individuals, as well as in the correspondence in this series. Of particular note in this series are the discharge papers from the Navy, 1953-1985. Also included are United Airline insurance records, taxes, bank records, will and testament, funeral records, correspondence between Poff and his mother, Ethel Poff, and correspondence between Mariah and Ethel Poff, who stayed in contact until approximately 1990.

The last series, Ephemera, clippings, miscellaneous contains homophile community ephemera and other material that does not fit into defined categories including saved envelopes for collages. Newspaper clippings and serials are approximately 1.5 linear feet. Newspaper clippings include clippings related to prison and gay reform issues; publicity for Manroot, Paul Mariah, and colleagues; and other various clippings pertaining to his interests or hometown. Serials are mostly gay serials, poetry magazines, local Bay Area serials, and college papers.

Helen Luster's personal literary collection came as one accession nested into Manroot / Paul Mariah's collection. Mariah helped Luster when she was suffering from cancer and took custody of her literary collection as well as some of her personal papers. The Helen Luster collection is fifteen linear feet and has been arranged and described as an individual collection (PCMS-0056). Because Paul and Helen had a professional and personal relationship, her correspondence to Paul and the production material for her last book, Crystal, produced by Manroot, is found in this collection in Manroot Books, Correspondence, and Poetry Workshops.

Helen Luster (1913-1985) was born in Evanston, Illinois. She was a political activist for peace and a poet for three decades. Luster was a co-editor of Trace literary magazine in Los Angeles, founder and president of the Los Angeles Poetry Center in 1966, and co-led poetry workshops in her home with Paul Mariah. She was a student of the Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado for ten years where she was also Allen Ginsberg's personal secretary. Helen Luster was also a student of parapsychology and active in the spiritual community. She was a member of seance and crystal groups and spoke at conferences on the subject of clairvoyance and synchronicity. A lot of her poetry is automatic writing.