Finding Aid to the Robert Allerton Parker Papers, 1927-1970

Box 1

Letters written by Robert Allerton Parker, 1940-1961.

Scope and Content Note

Typed drafts, carbon copies and holograph. These contain autobiographical information, and often relate to the biographies he was writing.

Boxes 1-2

Letters written to Parker

Additional Note

Arranged alphabetically by name of person or organization. A miscellany of single letters is in Box 1; the rest of the letters in Box 2.

They comment in general on his work or contain information on the subjects of his biographies.

A partial list of correspondents follows the Key to Arrangement.

carton Cartons 1-3

Writings by Parker

Carton 1

The Incredible Messiah

Scope and Content Note

Newspaper clippings concerning Father Divine; book reviews.

Mea Culpa

Scope and Content Note

Material relating to Destouches (Céline), including clippings, The Monstrous Giant Céline by Milton Hindus, etc.; reviews of the book, which Robert Allerton Parker translated from the French.

Thomas Traherne

Scope and Content Note

Notes for book by Gladys I. Wade, for which Parker prepared a selected bibliography.

The Transatlantic Smiths

Scope and Content Note

Incomplete draft; revised typescript; editorial revisions; reviews.

How to Write

Scope and Content Note

Notes and clippings; unpublished manuscript.

A Yankee Saint

Scope and Content Note

Notes and materials for the book; book reviews.

Carton 2

Ox Train

Scope and Content Note

Notes and preface; manuscript, with revisions. Unpublished novel based on the Donner Party, with alternate titles, Wagon Train, Undiscovered Country, This Is My Body.

Carton 3

Book reviews by Parker

Outlines for proposed books or articles

Scope and Content Note

Hunger-famine; The Magic of Line; Night Life; Orpheus in Paris; Pacific Panorama; Portraits in Prose

Film scenarios

Scope and Content Note

Cairo; The Donner Party; Fifty-second Street; Hortense; Light in Newgate; Oasis; Song of My Life; Tusitala or Teller of Tales

Theatre

Scope and Content Note

Fragments of two plays; 5050; The Lost Leader (Act 2 only); The Three Strangers

Articles, many relating to art

Scope and Content Note

"Actors of Songs;" (photocopy) "Alfred Stevens: The Beau Sabreur...;" "Antonio Moro ...;" article on tabernacle belonging to Noël Sullivan, with photograph; "Be Kind to Things" (Draft, complete?); "Caf' Con' and Cabaret;" "Copy Cat" (Clippings of his column); "Creating a New Europe;" "The Drawings of George Seurat;" "Drawings of the Musée Bonnat at Bayonne," with photographs of the drawings; "Emma Ciardi" (translation of article by Paul Léautaud, with photographs of Emma Ciardi's paintings); "Engravings of the Quattrocento;" "Gabriel de St. Aubin and his Brothers;" "The Genius of Jacques Callot;" "The Ladies and Mr. Henry James;" "The Little Portraits of Corneille de Lyon;" "The Masters on Modern Art;" "The Miracle of Poussin's Drawings;" "Modernity and the Drawings of Claude;" "Notes on Drawings at the Fogg Museum;" "Old Masters of the Upper Rhine;" "A Petit-Maitre of the Eighteenth Century;" "A Poet of Old Paris Walls;" "Receptivity or Discovery?" "The Revaluation of Lucas Cranach;" "Samuel Butler: The Art Student and Art Critic;" "Sidelights on the James Family;" "Such Pulp as Dreams Are Made On;" "Too Late in London." Some of these are manuscripts, but for the most part they are tear sheets of the printed articles.

Incomplete articles on art

The Audience

Scope and Content Note

Drafts, notes, outlines; introduction, chapter 1, and fragments of manuscript, an unfinished book Parker was working on at the time of his death.

See also notes and drafts on the Vaudeville Orpheum in Ctn. 4.

Note

Original finding aid refers to Ctn. 5.

Revolution in Amusement

Scope and Content Note

Outline and portions of the manuscript. The subject material ties in with that of The Audience.

Key to Arrangement

Partial List of Correspondents