Jump to Content

Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Guide to the Robert R. Kirsch Collection
Mss 51  
View entire collection guide What's This?
Search this collection
Collection Details
 
Table of contents What's This?
  • Descriptive Summary
  • Administrative Information
  • Biography
  • Scope and Content of Collection
  • Related Collections

  • Descriptive Summary

    Title: Robert R. Kirsch Collection,
    Date (inclusive): ca. 1970s
    Collection Number: Mss 51
    Collector: Kirsch, Robert R., 1922-
    Extent: 1.25 linear feet (1 records container)
    Repository: University of California, Santa Barbara. Library. Department of Special Collections
    Santa Barbara, California 93106-9010
    Physical Location: Del Sur
    Language: English.

    Administrative Information

    Access Restrictions

    None.

    Publication Rights

    Copyright has not been assigned to the Department of Special Collections, UCSB. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Department of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained.

    Preferred Citation

    Robert R. Kirsch Collection. Mss 51. Department of Special Collections, Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara.

    Acquisition Information

    Purchase, 1987.

    Biography

    Robert R. Kirsch (1922-1980) was the Los Angeles Times book critic for many years and a Santa Barbara area resident. He produced thousands of columns, book reviews, and essays, and also wrote fiction, sometimes under pseudonyms of Robert Dundee and Robert Bancroft. His works include: In the Wrong Rain (1959), Madeleine Austrian (1960), Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963, An Address at a Memorial Meeting Held in the School of Library Service, February 27, 1964, with Lawrence Clark Powell and Jacob Zeitlin (1964), The Wars of Pardon (1965), West of the West: Witnesses to the California Experience, 1542-1906; The Story of California from the Conquistadores to the Great Earthquake (1967), Lives, Works, & Transformations: A Quarter Century of Book Reviews and Essays (1978), and Casino: A Novel of Las Vegas (1979). Kirsch died in Santa Barbara, CA on Aug. 16, 1980.

    Scope and Content of Collection

    The collection contains approximately 400 b/w publicity photographs of literary figures whose books were sent for review by Robert Kirsch. They are arranged alphabetically by surname. In a few instances, a photograph's credits may refer to a given author but the image may be the book's subject(s) rather than the author. Most of the photographs are undated. Those that are dated mainly are from the latter 1970s.
    Authors in the collection include Dean Acheson, Mortimer Adler, Jorge Amado, Kingsley Amis, Hannah Arendt, Julian Barnes, John Barth, Isaiah Berlin, Carlos Fuentes, Christopher Isherwood, Maxine Hong Kingston, Arthur Koestler, Milan Kundera, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Charles A. Lindbergh, Cormac McCarthy, Armistead Maupin, Rollo May, Czeslaw Milosz, V. S. Naipaul, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Ondaatje, Kenneth Rexroth, Carl Rogers, Philip Roth, Andrei Sakharov, William Saroyan, Arthur M. Schlesinger, B. F. Skinner, C. P. Snow, Susan Sontag, Adlai Stevenson, Gore Vidal, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

    Related Collections

    UCLA Special Collections. Robert R. Kirsch Papers, 1959-1967. Collection No. 500. University of Tulsa. Robert Kirsch Papers.