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

Processed by The Bancroft Library staff

The Bancroft Library.

University of California, Berkeley

Berkeley, California, 94720-6000

Phone: (510) 642-6481

Fax: (510) 642-7589

Email: bancref@library.berkeley.edu

URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu

Note

This finding aid has been filmed for the National Inventory of Documentary Sources in the United States (Chadwyck-Healey Inc.)

Note

Arts and Humanities --Performing Arts --Theater Arts and Humanities --Literature --Criticism and Theory

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

Collection number: BANC MSS 71/235 z

The Bancroft Library

University of California, Berkeley

Berkeley, California

Contact Information:

The Bancroft Library.
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California, 94720-6000
Phone: (510) 642-6481
Fax: (510) 642-7589
Email: bancref@library.berkeley.edu
URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu

Processed by:: The Bancroft Library staff
Date Completed:: ca. 1971
Encoded by:: Charlotte Gerstein

Collection Summary

Collection Title: Robert Allerton Parker Papers,

Date (inclusive): 1927-1970

Collection Number: BANC MSS 71/235 z

Creator: Parker, Robert Allerton

Extent: Number of containers: 2 boxes, 4 cartons, 1 oversize folder

Repository: The Bancroft Library

Berkeley, California 94720-6000

Abstract: Correspondence, mainly about his writing; mss., with related materials, of his biographies; articles and book reviews by him relating to art and the theater; mss. of film scenarios and plays; unfinished ms. on the theater in America; unpublished novel based on the Donner Party; notes; and subject files.

Physical Location: For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.

Languages Represented: Collection materials are in English

Information for Researchers

Access

Collection is open for research.

Publication Rights

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

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], Robert Allerton Parker Papers, BANC MSS 71/235 z, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Materials Cataloged Separately

Books, written by Parker, which came with the collection, have been removed for separate cataloging.
Photographs have been transferred to the Portrait Collection of The Bancroft Library.

Administrative Information

Acquisition Information

The collection was given to The Bancroft Library by Parker's widow, Mrs. Robert Allerton Parker, on May 13, 1971.

Biographical Sketch

Robert Allerton Parker (1888-1970), American journalist, editor, biographer and critic, born and raised in Alameda, California, and a graduate of the University of California in 1909, was to reside most of his life in New York. From associate editor of Current Opinion (1914-1920), Parker turned to writing and editing for magazines of art - Arts & Decoration, The Arts, and The International Studio. He undertook several biographies -that of John Humphreys Noyes, founder of the Oneida Community of Perfectionists, A Yankee Saint (1935); Father Divine, The Incredible Messiah (1937); and a study of the Quaker family, the Logan Pearsall Smiths, in The Transatlantic Smiths (1959).

Parker was instrumental in the publication in 1944 of Dr. Gladys I. Wade's book, Thomas Traherne, for which he compiled an exhaustive bibliography. He also wrote an introduction to Ananda Coomaraswamy's essays, Am I My Brother's Keeper?, published in 1947, in an attempt to obtain the Nobel Prize for the Indian mystic.

His interest in the history of the American West led to a much reworked unpublished novel, Ox Train, based on the experiences of the Donner Party. At the time of his death, in 1970, Parker was working on a history of the theater in America, with special attention to vaudeville and to the theater in San Francisco.

Scope and Content

The papers include correspondence with authors of note, mainly commenting on or relating to his writings; manuscripts and related materials for his published biographies, and for his translation of Louis Ferdinand Céline's Mea Culpa (1937), as well as manuscripts of some of his unpublished work; book reviews by him; manuscripts of plays and film scenarios; tear sheets of many articles relating mainly to art; outlines and portions of unfinished works dealing with the theater in America; and extensive notes and subject files on the theater and other subjects. The Key to Arrangement which follows describes the collection in greater detail.

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.