Archival & Manuscript Collections

Abstract Helen Adam (1909-1993) was a poet and visual artist of the San Francisco Renaissance. Born in Scotland, she garnered acclaim at a young age for her collection of poems titled The Elfin Peddlar. After attending Edinburgh University for two years Helen and her sister and frequent collaborator Pat Adam worked as journalists in London before moving to the United States with their mother in 1939. The family made their way to San Francisco, at the beginning of...

Abstract Anne Blonstein (1958-2011) was born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, England, and studied plant genetics at Cambridge University. In 1983 Blonstein was appointed to a post-doctoral fellowship at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, where she remained for the rest of her life. She began publishing poetry in 1987, and in 1991 she left her career in science to pursue writing full time, working as a freelance translator and editor. The Anne Blonstein collection, 1975-2011, consists of...

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The Chain collection contains material pertaining to the editorial business and production of Chain magazine from 1993-2004. Material includes correspondence and submissions, production material, printer invoices, and correspondence between the editors, Juliana Spahr and Jena Osman. Formats include printed email, correspondence, floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, and VHS.

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The Contemporary Manuscripts Collection contains a total of thousands of pages of manuscripts and/or correspondence from hundreds of poets and writers such as Lascelles Abercrombie, W. H. Auden, David Gascoyne, Elizabeth Jennings, Hugh MacDiarmid, Thomas Merton, Charlotte Mew, Ezra Pound, Alastair Reid, Peter Russell, Winfield Townley Scott, Genevieve Taggard, Ruthven Todd, Henry Treece, and Louis Zukofsky.

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Earth's Daughters Collection, 1969-2015, contains materials related to the production of the magazine. The bulk of the material is submissions by poets. Other material includes correspondence, editorial business, financial records, grant applications, distribution records, production material, submission records, subscription records, art and ephemera.

Abstract K.S. Ernst has been writing poetry and making artwork since the 1960s. Her pieces span visual poetry, digital art, and fine art, incorporating sculpture, multimedia, works on paper, artists’ books, painting, fiber arts, and digital works. She has also participated in artist residencies, lectures, and performances with the Be Blank Consort, and runs Press Me Close, which publishes books, postcards, and T-shirts of visual poetry. The K.S. Ernst Collection (1965-2016) contains original...

Abstract The Amelia Etlinger collection, 1971-2014, is primarily a collection of over 100 art objects, mail art, and concrete poetry sent to Ellen Marie Helinka [Bissert], Mike Belt, Mirella Bentivoglio, and the University at Buffalo Poetry Collection in the 1970s and 1980s. Additional material includes correspondence between mailart recipients and Etlinger, and correspondence between recipients pertaining to Etlinger; exhibition catalogs, announcements, interviews, newspaper clippings, and...

Abstract The Helen Luster Collection contains manuscripts for her nine published books and unpublished manuscripts; correspondence between poets, scientists, science fiction writers, and parapsychologists; material related to her personal and professional relationship with Allen Ginsberg including manuscripts documenting their correspondence and a long poem; notes and documentation of her professional work including founder and president of Los Angeles Poetry Center, readings, and parapsychology...

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Materials related to the work of Deborah Meadows. Deborah Meadows is a poet, playwright, and essayist whose work includes Goodbye Tissues, Itenerant Man and Representing Absence. Meadows has worked with poets in Cuba and Buenos Aires. The collection includes Meadows' correspondence, notes, drafts, and other related materials.

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The Charlotte Mew collection, 1867-1933, measures 0.583 linear feet and includes autograph and typewritten manuscripts of poetry and prose, correspondence, photographs, documents, and clippings related to the English poet. Charlotte Mew (1869-1928), an author of poetry and prose, lived in London, England. Her life spanned from the Victorian and Edwardian eras to the emergence of Modernist poetry.

Abstract Charlotte Pressler is an educator, writer, and musician. Originally from northeast Ohio, she was heavily involved in the pre-punk Cleveland music scene in the 1970s. Since completing her PhD in Renaissance Literature at University at Buffalo in 2002, she has been at South Florida State College, where she is a professor of English and Philosophy and Director of the Honors Program. This collection consists of correspondence, ephemera, and printed material related the creation and publication...

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The Kristin Prevallet Helen Adam research papers document the processing of the Helen Adam collection and Prevallet’s research for A Helen Adam Reader and other related projects, ca. 1993-2007.

Abstract Gail Sher is a San Francisco area-based writer, teacher, and psychotherapist. She earned her B.A. in English from Northwestern University, received a Ford Foundation Fellowship to study linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin but chose instead to study middle English and (later) harpsichord at the University of California, Berkeley. She won a Teacher of the Year award from the combined education faculties of Berkeley, Stanford, and San Francisco State for her high school teaching of...

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The Jayne Lyn Stahl collection contains materials related to the plays, writings and poetry of Jayne Lyn Stahl. Jayne Lyn Stahl was a freelance poet, playwright, freelance essayist, and member of the PEN American Center. The collection includes draft poems, screenplays, letters, and other related materials.

Abstract The Carolyn Stoloff Collection contains typed and autograph manuscripts, many with numerous handwritten corrections, for over a dozen individual poems; publicity, reviews, and correspondence for Stepping Out (1971); correspondence to and from individuals such as Sonya Dorman Hess, and to and from little magazines and literary journals including Poetry Northwest, The New...

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The Jean Starr Untermeyer collection contains over 3,000 letters to Jean Starr Untermeyer and in some cases to Louis Untermeyer from a list of distinguished people; Jean Starr Untermeyer's letters; Louis Untermeyer's letters; various manuscripts for individual poems and prose works by Jean Starr Untermeyer and Louis Untermeyer; typescripts; various auxiliary manuscripts by other authors; photographs; and miscellaneous peripheral items.