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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.

Correspondence, outlines and drafts, manuscripts, letters of agreement, contracts, photographs, artwork, and memorabilia. The collection is divided into two parts: the Frederic Dannay papers and the files of ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE (EQMM). The Dannay papers consist of extensive correspondence with most of the notable mystery writers of this century, as well as well-known authors who sometimes wrote in that genre: Isaac Asimov; Lawrence Block; Ray Bradbury; Pearl S Buck; Edgar Rice Burroughs; James M. Cain; Raymond Chandler; Agatha Christie, etc. Most of the novels and short stories written by Dannay and Lee are represented in manuscript form: "The Roman Hat Mystery;" "Ten Day's Wonder;" "Cat of Many Tails;" "The Scarlet Letters;" "The Glass Village;" "The Player on the Other Side;" "And on the Eighth Day" etc. In addition, there are the manuscripts of books edited by Ellery Queen; manuscripts by Ellery Queen Jr.; scripts by Ellery Queen; poetry by Dannay; contracts between Dannay and Lee, as well as between them both as Ellery Queen and numerous parties. There are also manuscripts by such notables as Jorge Luis Borges; Erskine Caldwell; Raymond Chandler; Agatha Christie; Stanley Ellin; William Faulkner; Dashiell Hammett; O Henry; Nigel Morland; Georges Simenon; Muriel Spark; Julian Symons; Roy Vickers; and Cornell Woolrich.