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The Elisabeth Sifton Papers span much of Mrs. Sifton's working life. General correspondence is filed alphabetically by last name and includes correspondence related to the day-to-day business of publising, as well as correspondence related to projects ultimately not realized by Mrs. Sifton. Author-specific files deal with projects that Mrs. Sifton worked extensively on. Some files lack information that remains in the archives of the publishing house where the project was completed. Work life files deal with involvement in various professional associations, classes taught by Mrs. Sifton, and some of Mrs. Sifton's own published writing.

These files have been compiled by the Rare Book and Manuscript Library from its origin in 1930 through the present day. The material derives largely from gifts, and the occasional purchase; much of the subject file in particular is made of ephemera included in the American Type Founders, Co. Library, purchased in 1942. Prospectuses and information sent by fine presses and book artists are added to the relevant files in an ongoing fashion. The files cover subjects from the beginning of printing to the current day.

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, manuscripts, documents, photographs, subject files, drawings and printed material of the Vserossiiskii zemskii soiuz (All Russian Zemstvo Union). The correspondence, spanning the years 1920-1944, is for the most part addressed to Porfirii N. Sorokin, Executive Secretary of the organization's Vremennyi glavnyi komitet (Temporary Executive Committee), the coordinating unit for all the institutions of the Zemstvo Union. The manuscripts include writings by N. I. Astrov, V. D. Kuz'min-Karavaev, and others. The documents are almost exclusively minutes of the Temporary Executive Committee's meetings from the period 1919-1924. The photographs, for the most part unidentified, are of Russian refugee settlements and White Army encampments in the area of Constantinople and Gallipoli, ca. 1921. The subject files include some financial records, and the printed material include the Vserossiiskii zemskii soiuz bulletin from 1916-1921 as well as publications about the Rossiiskii Zemsko-gorodskoi komitet and the Vserossiiskii soiuz gorodov.

The collection consists of the editorial and production archives of Vanguard Press: correspondence, manuscripts, contracts, memoranda, galley proofs, photographs, clippings, and printed materials. The correspondence and editorial files contain a wealth of detailed information about individual authors and the growth and development of the Press. Among the cataloged correspondents are: Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Stephen Vincent Benét, William Rose Benét; Phyllis Bottome; Pierre Boulle; Jocelyn Brooke; Cyril Connolly; A.J. Cronin; Nigel Dennis; John Dewey; Max Eastman; James T. Farrell; Vardis Fisher; Richard Garnett; Theodor Seuss Geisel; Louis Golding; Paul Goodman; Horace Gregory; Geoffrey Grigson; Lillian Hellman; William Heyen; Harold L. Ickes; Christopher Isherwood; Alfred Kazin; Philip Lamantia; Sinclair Lewis; Emanuel Litvinoff; Dwight Macdonald; Archibald MacLeish; Marshall McLuhan; Thomas Mann; Edgar Lee Masters; H. L. Mencken; William Meredith; Joyce Carol Oates; Katherine Anne Porter; Barbara Pym; William Sansom; William Saroyan; Ramon J. Sender; Upton Sinclair; Rex Stout; Edith Sitwell; Paul Theroux; Lionel Trilling; Harry S. Trumam; Louis Untermeyer; Eudora Welty; Richard Wilbur; and Thornton Wilder. There are some manuscripts by Bellow; Bottome; Boulle; Farrell; Grigson; Litvinoff; MacDonald; Oates; John Cowper Powys; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.; Patrick Tanner; William Targ; Theroux; and Sitwell.

Correspondence; manuscripts of books, chapters, addresses, lectures, articles, and other writings; clippings and other printed materials relating to Butler's life and career, and memorabilia, ca. 1900-1947. Also, correspondence, 1891-1946, between Butler and presidents of the United States including William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman.

Correspondence, manuscripts, contracts, memos., and photographs. The correspondence pertains to the publications of numerous important fiction and non-fiction authors. The files are particularly strong for authors included in two important historical series"The New American Nation" Richard B. Morris and Henry S. Commager, editors; and "The Rise of Modern Europe" William L. Langer, editor. The files of Cass Canfield Sr. contain substantial material on Planned Parenthood and International Planned Parenthood.

Correspondence, manuscripts, documents, photographs, notes, inteviews, articles, newspapers, clippings, and press releases of Harrison Evans Salisbury, a prominent journalist and editor.