Search

Correspondence, manuscripts, memorabilia, photographs, phonograph and tape recordings, and printed files. Included are Cerf's personal correspondence files, 1929-1945, and the diaries and scrapbooks which he maintained from his school days throughout his active career. The diaries, in date-book format, contain terse notes on Cerf's meetings with authors and friends, on his travels and publishing activities; the scrapbooks contain correspondence and photographs, as well as memorabilia and printed items, and were annotated by Cerf and his wife, Phyllis Fraser Cerf Wagner. Also in the collection are manuscripts and proofs for Cerf's books including "The Laugh's on Me""Treasury of Atrocious Puns""The Sound of Laughter""Stories to Make You Feel Better", and "At Random: the Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf", which was edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner and Albert Erskine, 1977. The papers also include condolence letters written at the time of Cerf's death, photographs and photo albums,certificates and awards, and miscellaneous printed material, including Random House and Modern Library catalogues. Among the major correspondents are: Truman Capote, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Edna Ferber, Moss Hart, J. Edgar Hoover, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon B. Johnson, John Lindsay, Joshua Logan, John O'Hara, Jacqueline Onassis, Richard Rodgers, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gertrude Stein, Adlai Stevenson, Harry Truman, and Robert Penn Warren

Correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, memorabilia, business records, book catalogs and other printed materials of Louis and Marguerite Cohn and their customers, associates and friends. Correspondents include Stephen Vincent Benʹet, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, and Marianne Moore, all among the authors represented in the Crown Octavos series published by the House of Books; there are also manuscripts, proofs and correspondence with printers for this series. Other correspondents include Cyril Connolly, W. Somerset Maugham and Tom Stoppard. Also in the collection are letters and manuscripts from the stock of the shop; notable among these are a series of Graham Greene letters and pages from an autograph book which contains entries from many turn of the century American Literary figures. The collection also include the personal memorabilia of the Cohn and Arnold families. Louis Cohn's participation in World War I as an officer in the French Army is recorded in photographs, documents and memorabilia. Marguerite's childhood collections, among them many early greeting cards, are also included.

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, drafts, notes, journals, scrapbooks, audio tapes, datebooks and calendars, photographs, printed material, and memorabilia. Included are files relating to articles which she researched and wrote while on the staff of LIFE magazine, especially on popular figures in current literature and the arts. There are also research files and typescripts for her books: PLEASE TOUCH, A DIFFERENT WOMAN, and FAMILIES. Among the correspondents are: Paul Bowles, Agnes de Mille, Ken Kesey, and Hope Cooke Namgyal