Special Collections & University Archives Search

  • Special Collections

    Herbert David Croly, 1869-1930, founder and editor of the "New Republic". Five letters written by Herbert Croly to Charlotte Rudyard. The letters are personal in nature, and in them Croly frequently mentions affairs at the New Republic. There is also a postcard from Louise Croly to Rudyard, as well as several envelopes.

    Collection NumberMS 94
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
  • Special Collections

    HUMANALO, the Science Fiction Society of New Hampshire, was organized in July 1979 at the home of Steve Goldstein, its first president. The society took its name from the first two letters of each of the towns in which charter members resided, Hudson, Manchester, Nashua, and Londonderry. The Society’s sought to promote interest in Science fiction through discussions and other events. HUMANALO disbanded in February…

    Collection NumberMC 84
  • Special Collections

    Jack (Jean-Louis Lebris de) Kerouac (1922-1969), American novelist and memoirist, was born and grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts. He was a leading writer of the Beat Generation, and his second novel "On the Road" (1957) was the defacto manifesto of the movement. The collection consists mainly of pamphlets and broadsides, 1959-1986, which supplement the Library's special collection of Kerouac books.

    Collection NumberMC 59
    Formats
    • Audio Recordings
    • Books
    • Broadsides
  • Special Collections

    Shaker of Enfield, N.H., musician, and poet. Composer of the popular Shaker song "Millenial Praise". Music book kept by James Russell of Enfield, N.H. The first 56 pages of the book contain a 12 section lesson on the principles of music. Pages 58-145 contain hymns and poems Russell wrote for the funerals of numerous Enfield and Canterbury, N.H. Shakers. The final hymn in the book, written in a different hand, is a funeral hymn for Russell. Also included in the book are two poems: one is a…

    Collection NumberMS 107
    Formats
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
    • Sheet Music
  • Special Collections

    L. James (Jim) Bashline, son of J. Stanley and Mildred S. Bashline, was born in Tioga, PA on November 18, 1931. He was educated at Pennsylvania State University and Albright Art School, after which he entered the field of journalism. The James and Sylvia Bashline collection consists primarily of the published magazine and newspaper articles of Jim and Sylvia Bashline, between 1958 and 1995. Topics are mostly…

    Collection NumberMC 252
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Newspapers & Publications
    • Photographs, Slides & Negatives
    • Sketches & Illustrations
  • Special Collections

    L. James (Jim) Bashline, son of J. Stanley and Mildred S. Bashline, was born in Tioga, PA on November 18, 1931. He was educated at Pennsylvania State University and Albright Art School, after which he entered the field of journalism. The James and Sylvia Bashline collection consists primarily of the published magazine and newspaper articles of Jim and Sylvia Bashline, between 1958 and 1995. Topics are mostly…

    Collection NumberMC 252
    Formats
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
    • Newspapers & Publications
    • Photographs, Slides & Negatives
    • Sketches & Illustrations
  • Special Collections

    James T. Fields (1817-1881), author, poet, and publisher, was born in Portsmouth, NH in 1817. At the age of fourteen, he became a clerk in a bookstore in Boston, MA and later a partner in the publishing house of Ticknor and Fields. He edited the Atlantic Monthly, which was published by his firm, wrote several books of poetry and prose, and, like his wife Annie Adams Fields, befriended some of America’s foremost intellectuals. Four letters penned by James T. Fields to various people between the…

    Collection NumberMS 59
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
  • Special Collections

    Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1972 she married Donald Hall, whom she had met while a student at the University of Michigan. In 1975, the couple moved to Eagle Pond Farm in Wilmot, New Hampshire. Here they lived and worked together until Kenyon's death from leukemia. Kenyon's books include From Room to Room (1978), Boat of Quiet Hours (1986), Let Evening Come (1990), and Constance (1993)…

    Collection NumberMC 164
    Formats
    • Books
    • Diaries
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    Jean Pedrick Kefferstan (1922-2006),was born in Salem, Massachusetts. She was a poet, co-founder of the Alice James Poetry Cooperative (later Alice James Books), and founder of Skimmilk Farm summer poetry workshops in Brentwood, NH. Pedrick published poems in magazines such as Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Yankee, and The Paris Review, in addition to co-founding the Alice James Poetry Cooperative (1973). Pedrick…

    Collection NumberMC 196
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    A Republican member of the NH State Legislature from Rollinsford, N.H., elected in 1920 via a write-in campaign by newly enfranchised women voters, Jessie Doe was an outspoken advocate for women’s rights. She was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1932, and from 1934 until 1943 served as a Trustee of the University of New Hampshire. Holograph and typed drafts of various short stories, possibly written for the 1942 Towle Writer’s Conference (one of the stories is dated July 9,…

    Collection NumberMS 209
    Formats
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    American author and educator who was best known for his proponents of homeschooling. Typescript of John Caldwell Holt’s work “The Dignity of Children” – an article that discusses issues of self-respect, child psychology, and children’s self-perception. Also included is a copy of Holt’s speech “Education and Peace” with excerpts from his book How Children Fail .

    Collection NumberMS 132
    Formats
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    John M. Duncan was born in Gardner, Massachusetts in 1902, and died in 1976. He was a Staff Sergeant in World War II and following his discharge he married a librarian, Lillian Perkins (“Perks”), who worked at the University of New Hampshire, and they lived in Madbury, N.H. He began writing in 1948. He published his first novel in 1956. The collection consists of various manuscripts and proofs of Duncan’s two novels…

    Collection NumberMC 26
    Formats
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892) was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States A four page letter to Sarah Orne Jewett, London, England, July 3, 1882 in which Whittier expresses delight at the fact that Jewett is writing again. He also describes a trip to the Isles of Shoals and Celia Thaxter’s growing interest in “her spiritualistic experiences.” Letter accompanied by addressed and stamped envelope. 2…

    Collection NumberMS 20
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
  • Special Collections

    Poet, professor of Literature and Modern Poetry at Tufts University for 28 years. Two letters written by Holmes. The first is addressed as an open letter to the Folio 1943 and describes Holmes’ passion for writing and the work of Carroll Towle and the Towle Writer’s Conference at U.N.H. The second, addressed to Bacon Collamore, discusses their mutual admiration of and collecting interests in Robert Frost. Also…

    Collection NumberMS 131
    Formats
    • Broadsides
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    Author Kenneth Roberts (1885-1957) was born in Kennebunk, Maine. He was educated at Cornell University, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Cornell Widow, a humor magazine, for two years prior to his graduation in 1908. From 1909 to 1917, he was a reporter and columnist for the Boston Post. After serving in World War I, Roberts worked as roving correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post. Northwest …

    Collection NumberMC 48
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    Dudley Laufman (b. 1930) is a folk dance caller, band leader, musician, composer, author, and poet from Canterbury, NH. He was heavily influenced by the late caller Ralph Page, and was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship Award in 2009. Without Dudley's work during the contra dance revival of the 1960s-1970s and onwards, it is likely that the contra dance tradition as we know it would be gone forever. Contains…

    Collection NumberMC 107
    Formats
    • Audio Recordings
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
    • Photographs, Slides & Negatives
  • Special Collections

    Lesley Frost Ballantine was the second child of Robert and Elinor Frost. She served as the first chairman of the Robert Frost Foundation and oversaw the restoration of the Frost farm in Derry, New Hampshire. The Lesley Frost Ballantine Collection is organized in two major series: materials from LFB and materials related to Robert Frost.

    Collection NumberMC 185
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    Lewis Gaylord Clark (1808-1873), editor and publisher of the Knickerbocker magazine. Two letters written by Lewis Gaylord Clark of the Knickerbocker magazine to M.S. Beach inquiring about the possibility of publishing some accounts of the life of the notorious criminal Stephen Burroughs. The June 29 and July 2 1857 letters describe public reaction to Burrough’s book and brief biographical notes about his life and…

    Collection NumberMS 66
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
  • Special Collections

    Lewis Stark (1908-2004) began collecting bookplates as an undergraduate at UNH in the late 1920s and later used this collection as the basis for his master’s thesis, “English Literature as Reflected in Bookplate Design.” The collection contains more than 4,000 bookplates (most dating from the late 1800s and early 1900s), 150 books, pamphlets and periodicals relating to bookplates, Lewis Stark’s thesis, and a small…

    Collection NumberMC 25
    Formats
    • Books
  • Special Collections

    Drs. Lorus and Margery Milne were an eminent husband-and-wife team, who worked together as biologists, teachers, writers, lecturers, and experts on ecology. This collection has been roughly sorted by subject.

    Collection NumberMC 314 [Partially stored offsite]
    Formats
    • Books
    • Diaries
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
    • Newspapers & Publications
    • Photographs, Slides & Negatives
  • Special Collections

    Louis V. Ledoux, author and poet, was born in New York City in 1880. He wrote several books of poetry and prose and was a recognized authority on Japanese prints. Ledoux died in New York in 1948. Letter written Jan. 27, 1911 by Louis Ledoux which both recommends and praises Edwin Arlington Robinson’s book The Town Down the River.

    Collection NumberMS 68
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
  • Special Collections

    Author from Northwood, NH. He is best known for his book The Death of the Detective, which was nominated for the National Book Award in 1974. This collection contains 24 letters written mostly to his editors at Little, Brown and Company, about his career as a novelist. In 1964, there is a 4 page letter that is written as an autobiography and analysis of his own work. Other letters are about his next novel and its…

    Collection NumberMS 229
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
  • Special Collections

    Martin Woodman Hoyt (1847-1924) was born in Northwood, N.H. He attended both Pittsfield Academy and Dartmouth College. Attending these schools with him was Nathan Robert Goss [1846-1905; Rye, N.H.]. The two became friends and lifelong collaborators in the production of “highly stylized tales of mystery, romance, and the frontier.” The collection contains the letters, of Martin Woodman Hoyt to Nathan…

    Collection NumberMC 99
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
  • Special Collections

    Poet and novelist who lived in Warner, New Hampshire. Four letters between Maxine Kumin and William B. Ewert in 1973 that document the publication of Kumin’s poem “On Digging Out Old Lilacs” in the Friends of the University of New Hampshire Library Newsletter (Dec. 1973). Also included is a typescript copy of the poem, a program from Kumin’s reading at the Writer’s Forum, State University of New York at Brockport (Feb. 1976), and a photograph of Kumin.

    Collection NumberMS 145
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    Mekeel McBride (1950-) is a writer who studied under Samuel Yellen, as well as going on to teach at Harvard, Princeton, Wheaton, and UNH (1979-present). Her books include A Change in the Weather (Chowder Chapbooks, 1979), No Ordinary World (1979), The Going Under of the Evening Land (1983), Red Letter Days (1988), Wind of the White Dresses (1995), and The Deepest Part of the River (2001), all published by Carnegie…

    Collection NumberMC 163
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
    • Newspapers & Publications
    • Photographs, Slides & Negatives
  • Special Collections

    Morris Leopold Ernst (1888–1976) was an American lawyer and co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union. The manuscript of So Far So Good is the second typed draft and dates from 1944. The novel was eventually published under the title So Far So Good in 1948. The draft runs to 532 pages and, according to a bookplate included with it, was donated to the University of New Hampshire Library by the residents of…

    Collection NumberMS 238
    Formats
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    The High School Underground Newspaper Collection includes the first ten issues of what was initially called The Concord Union Leader (from January-December 1969, issues 1-6), and then The Bane (issues 7-10, February-May 1970) produced by students at Concord High School, St. Paul’s, and Bishop Brady High School; the first four issues of The Barnacle, produced between Dec. 1968 and sometime in 1969 by students at Manchester Memorial High School; The Bosheeto produced by New London High School in…

    Collection NumberMS 234
    Formats
    • Newspapers & Publications
  • The University of New Hampshire's Special Collection received the negatives and prints of New Hampshire writers from the University of New Hampshire's Media Services in 1982. The collection consists of 86 copy negatives and 64 prints of photographs of New Hampshire writers and scenes made for use in the 1981 Media Services film, "New Hampshire Writers View the Small Town."

    Collection NumberMC 382
    Formats
    • Photographs, Slides & Negatives
  • Special Collections

    The University of New Hampshire's Special Collection received the negatives and prints of New Hampshire writers from the University of New Hampshire's Media Services in 1982. The collection consists of 86 copy negatives and 64 prints of photographs of New Hampshire writers and scenes made for use in the 1981 Media Services film, "New Hampshire Writers View the Small Town."

    Collection NumberVC 19
    Formats
    • Photographs, Slides & Negatives
  • Special Collections

    Nicholas Durso (b. 1950) graduated from Notre Dame in 1977 and taught English at Hebron Academy near South Paris and Norway, Maine in the late 1970s and early 1980s, directing a number of play productions there. Tidewater is a play about Sarah Orne Jewett and was originally performed in Norway, Maine at the Norway Memorial Library on October 8, 1981 as part of a project sponsored by the Maine Women Writers Collection at Westbrook College and was funded by the Maine Council for the Humanities…

    Collection NumberMS 236
    Formats
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    Nonny Hogrogian started her career as a designer of children’s books but soon began illustrating and writing. She twice won the Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished picture book for children, in 1966 for Always Room For One More and in 1972 for One Fine Day. She married David Kherdian in 1971, poet, author and anthologist. Kherdian’s best-known book is The Road From Home, an account of his mother’s…

    Collection NumberMC 86
    Formats
    • Broadsides
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
    • Newspapers & Publications
  • Special Collections

    Frederic Ogden Nash, 1902-1971 was an American Poet well known for his humorous poetry. He was born in Rye, N.Y. and lived most of his life in Baltimore but he spent summers with his family in a house at Little Boar's Head in North Hampton, N.H. and is buried in the town's East Side Cemetery. Three letters from Ogden Nash written to Nicholas Bentley. In one letter, Nash offers to help Bentley in dealing with The New Yorker; in another, he mentions his illness in 1964, and in the third he…

    Collection NumberMS 84
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
  • Special Collections

    Author, Irish poet and collector of folklore A letter written in New York City by Colum on Jan. 19, 1921 in which he discusses meeting Mr. and Mrs. Kershaw in Peterborough, N.H., while visiting the MacDowell Colony.

    Collection NumberMS 124
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
  • Special Collections

    Major Paul L. Briand, Jr. was a World War II veteran, a 1948 graduate of the University of New Hampshire, and a commissioned officer in the US Air Force. In 1967, the State University of New York, Oswego appointed Briand as a full professor and he taught there until his death in 1986. The Paul L. Briand, Jr. Papers primarily contains correspondence, notes, newspaper clippings, photographs and other information …

    Collection NumberMC 120
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
    • Photographs, Slides & Negatives
  • Special Collections

    American dramatist and poet who settled in Cornish, NH. Three letters written by Percy MacKaye. In the first letter MacKaye congratulates Stuart Pratt Sherman on one of his books and mentions his travels. The second letter, addressed to Jamie, asks for assistance with problems concerning access to his house in Shirley, Mass. In the third letter, written to Lester Roberts, MacKaye states that A Garland for Sylvia is the only work of his own he feels any “especial personal liking for.” The letter…

    Collection NumberMS 133
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
  • Special Collections

    Richard Wilmer Rowan (1894-1964) has been described as the foremost American non-fiction writer on the history of espionage. He was educated at Brown and Columbia and served in the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Service during World War I. He maintained a large international network of sources which provided him with information on intelligence activities. The collection includes correspondence from Allen W. …

    Collection NumberMC 95
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Newspapers & Publications
  • Special Collections

    American poet, New Hampshire resident and teacher Two-page letter and accompanying poem, “Forest Flowers,” from Robert Frost to Miss Myrtle Raitt at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire, where Frost had previously taught. There is also a fourteen-page typed transcription of an untitled essay about Frost written by Miss Raitt, in which she quotes the poem and the contents of the letter in full.

    Collection NumberMS 178
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    Robert Frost (1874-1963) was a distinguished American poet and winner of four Pulitzer Prizes, born in San Francisco. He moved to New England in 1885, where he attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University. In 1895 he married Elinor Miriam White. Frost had published only a few poems before 1913 when his first book, A Boy’s Will, was printed in England. Although fame came late, Frost eventually became America’s…

    Collection NumberMC 44
    Formats
    • Books
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
    • Photographs, Slides & Negatives
  • Special Collections

    The Robert Frost Youth Poet Program was begun in 1997 to provide New Hampshire fourth grade students in public and private schools the opportunity to express their feelings about New Hampshire in a poem in the hope that it will increase appreciation of the state’s natural and cultural resources and also encourage students to discover the poet in themselves. The program is sponsored by the Robert Frost Farm in Derry,…

    Collection NumberMC 214
    Formats
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    Poet Robert Huff (1924-1993) was educated at Wayne State University, Michigan. Huff’s first book of poetry, Colonel Johnson’s Ride, was published in 1959. Three others followed: The Course (1966); The Ventriloquist (1977), and Shore Guide to Flocking Names (1985). He was a Bread Loaf Writers Conference Fellow in 1961, and a MacDowell Colony [Peterborough, N.H.] Fellow in 1963. The Robert Huff Collection, 1948-1989,…

    Collection NumberMC 87
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    Poet and author buried in the Stark Cemetery, Dunbarton, NH. A Postcard sent by Robert Lowell [1964-1977] to Arnold Grade, State University of N.Y. at Brockport. Lowell states that he was “never a student of Robert Frost’s, except in times of conversation.”

    Collection NumberMS 144
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
  • Special Collections

    Robert P. Tristram Coffin (1892-1955) grew up in Brunswick, Maine on a “saltwater farm.” He attended Bowdoin, Princeton, and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar before, as well as after, serving two years in World War I. He taught at Wells College from 1921-1934 and Bowdoin College, where he was Pierce Professor in English from 1934 until his death in 1955. Coffin was also associated with the University…

    Collection NumberMC 46
    Formats
    • Audio Recordings
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
    • Newspapers & Publications
    • Photographs, Slides & Negatives
    • Sketches & Illustrations
  • Special Collections

    Robert Wear was born in Yunnan-fu, China on September 6, 1916, the son of missionaries who met while in China. His mother, Alice, née von Niederhauser, worked for the German Evangelical Church while his father, Robert Benjamin, worked for the YMCA. The collection contains manuscript material for Wear’s autobiography Barbed Wire Recollections, an essay about his father, Dad Was A Dandy Dude, and drafts of …

    Collection NumberMC 177
    Formats
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, author and editor, was born in Newport, N.H. in 1788. She married in 1813, and when her husband died suddenly in 1822, she began writing to make a living. Her stories and poems attracted a large audience, and in 1828 she accepted a job as editor of the Ladies Magazine, later called Godey’s Ladies Magazine, “the best known of all American periodicals for women." There are three letters…

    Collection NumberMS 61
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909), author and poet, was born and lived in South Berwick, Maine. Her best known works are The Country of the Pointed Firs and the short story “A White Heron”. Her first novel was Deephaven. The Sarah Orne Jewett Collection contains 9 letters written by Jewett from 1880-1891, various printed materials, and a family photo album.

    Collection NumberMC 128
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
    • Photographs, Slides & Negatives
  • Special Collections

    The Sceptre Press, owned by Martin Booth, began at Frensham, Surrey, England in 1969. Its first publication was a broadside of a poem by Alan Brownjohn entitled “Being a Garoon." The press ceased operation in 1981, but in 1984 the rights to the name “Sceptre Press” were purchased by Nora Aldridge. Martin Booth (d. 2004) was born in Lancashire, England in 1944 and was educated at the King George V School in Hong Kong…

    Collection NumberMC 62
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Newspapers & Publications
  • University Archives

    The Senior Writers Action Group is affiliated with the Active Retirement Association (ARA) in Durham, New Hampshire. This series contains the publications of the Senior Writers’ Action Group.

    Collection NumberUA 17/29
    Formats
    • Minutes & Reports
  • Special Collections

    Shirley Frances Barker, author, editor, and librarian was born in Farmington, N.H. in 1911. She graduated from the University of New Hampshire and later received masters degrees in both English and Library Science. She wrote essays, poems, short stories, and novels and was a staff member of the Towle Writers Conference at the University of New Hampshire from 1938 to 1940. She was also editorial assistant for New Hampshire Profiles magazine. She died in 1965. The collection consists of…

    Collection NumberMC 4
    Formats
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    Susan Wilbur Jones, wife of Llewellyn Jones, a former literary editor of the Chicago Evening Post and later editor of the Christian Register, a magazine associated with the Unitarian Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, took short-story writing courses from May Sarton at Radcliffe College. The majority of the material relates to the seminar on the short story taught by May Sarton at Radcliffe College in 1956-1957 and taken by Mrs. Susan W. Jones. There are two short stories written as coursework…

    Collection NumberMS 213
    Formats
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts
  • Special Collections

    Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) was a New Hampshire-born author, poet and editor. His most noteable works are The Story of a Bad Boy and An Old Town By The Sea. Letter written by Thomas Bailey Aldrich in 1904 to Reverend John M. Milson that promises him a copy of the poem “Two Moods.” Included is Aldrich’s signed and undated, holograph copy of “Two Moods.”

    Collection NumberMS 89
    Formats
    • Letters & Postcards
    • Manuscripts & Typescripts