Wallace Stevens Oral History Collection, 1975-1985, bulk 1976-1978

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Summary

Creators:
Stevens, Wallace, 1879-1955.
Abstract:
This collection contains oral history tapes, transcriptions, and related correspondence created by English professor Peter A. Brazeau during his research for an oral history biography of American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). Includes correspondence and interviews with Stevens' relatives, friends, neighbors, employees, business colleagues, and literary associates.
Extent:
605 pieces in 26 boxes
Language:
English.

Background

Scope and content:

The 137 oral history tapes and 105 transcriptions, together with 363 pieces of correspondence, that make up this collection were created by Peter A. Brazeau during the course of his research for his oral history biography of Wallace Stevens: Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered (New York: Random House, 1983). Brazeau, a member of the English Department faculty of St. Joseph College, wrote to and interviewed dozens of Stevens' relatives, friends, neighbors, employees, business colleagues, and literary associates and acquaintances in order to elicit their recollections about the poet.

While Brazeau mined the material fairly thoroughly, the mass of information was too great for it all to be used in the book, and there yet remains a good deal of unused data. Therefore, this collection is an excellent research tool for Stevens scholarship.

Researchers are advised to use Brazeau's Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered as a reference source for the collection, to identify the people whose interviews and correspondence are contained in the collection.

Note: In no instance will the master tapes or the originals of the transcriptions be provided for research.

Physical Description
There are three formats of material:

1. Tapes. Duplicate cassette tapes have been made from the master tapes (which are in both cassette and reel-to-reel formats). A fairly substantial number of the master tapes are of markedly inferior sound quality, and, while the copies are no worse in quality, it has not been possible to improve or enhance the quality of the copies. The most frequent problem is either very low volume or loud background noise, or a combination of the two.

Researchers are cautioned that there is almost certainly some duplication in the tapes for some individuals. This is often due to Brazeau's inconsistent practice of making a second master of a given interview (in either the same or a different format), whose contents may or may not exactly match those of the first master. In almost every instance, the task of exhaustively comparing the contents of two masters proved too unwieldy and time-consuming and had to be abandoned; all that could be done was to copy each master tape unless duplicate masters could be readily identified. Moreover, Brazeau would group interviews on tapes in the most economical manner possible, and these would not be grouped similarly for duplicate master tapes, e.g., groups of interviews on a reel-to-reel tape would not then be retained as a group on Brazeau's own second (cassette) master but would be dispersed to several cassette tapes. This made the identification of duplicate interviews especially difficult. A third difficulty was Brazeau's frequent habit of beginning an interview too early on the tape (with far too little leader tape) or with the volume initially too low, so that his verbal identification of the interviewee and date of the interview are unintelligible. In short, the tapes were made, not by a professional oral historian, but by a Stevens scholar who used the craft as a means to pursue his own research, so the quality of recordings is highly uneven.

2. Transcriptions. The transcriptions have been xeroxed, and the xeroxes will be used for research purposes. Both the originals and the xeroxes are difficult to read, for Brazeau wrote the transcriptions by hand, often in pencil. Moreover, his transcriptions are not complete but are selective; he omitted segments that were not of interest for his own research.

3. Correspondence. The correspondence consists of originals, most in good condition.

Biographical / historical:

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was one of the foremost American poets of the first half of the 20th century. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Stevens retained an interest during his lifetime in his native Berks County, Pennsylvania. His wife, Elsie Viola (Moll) Stevens, came from Reading, and both Stevens and his wife devoted considerable time and energy tracing their family ancestries (primarily in the 1940s).

Though Stevens refused to consider his life a dichotomy, his poetic activities were accomplished while he was holding a full-time position as a legal advisor for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company in Hartford, Connecticut, the firm for which he acted as Vice-President from 1934 until his death in 1955.

Stevens began writing verse as a student at Harvard University and had a number of his verses published in the Harvard Advocate and the Harvard Monthly between 1898 and 1900. In 1908 and 1909, Stevens presented his future wife, Elsie Viola Moll, with two little notebooks of poems (A Book of Verses and The Little June Book) which gathered together short poems Stevens had been experimenting with since leaving Harvard. Between 1914 and 1923, Stevens submitted poems to a number of journals, including Poetry (edited by Harriet Monroe), The Dial and Others (edited by Alfred Kreymborg). In 1923, Stevens' first book of poems, Harmonium, was published. With Harmonium, he began a lifelong association with the publishing firm Alfred A. Knopf Inc. Stevens did, however, offer the Cummington Press, a small fine press, three of his books: Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), Esthétique du Mal (1945), and Three Academic Pieces (1947). The Alcestis Press, under the direction of Ronald Lane Latimer, printed Ideas of Order (1935) and Owl's Clover (1936).

Stevens was twice awarded the National Book Award: in 1950 for The Auroras of Autumn (1950) and in 1954 for Collected Poems (1954). He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1955.

Acquisition information:
Tapes and transcriptions acquired from J. R. Harrison (executor of Peter Brazeau's estate) in June 1989. Correspondence acquired from Harrison in July 1990.
Arrangement:

Boxes 1-4: Cassette tapes (copies).

Boxes 5-8: Transcriptions (copies).

Boxes 9-15: Correspondence.

Boxes 16-19: Transcriptions (masters -- not to be circulated).

Boxes 20-26: Cassette and reel-to-reel tapes (masters -- not to be circulated).

Rules or conventions:
Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Open to qualified researchers by prior application through the Reader Services Department. For more information, contact Reader Services.

The master cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes and original transcriptions do not circulate.

Location of this collection:
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108, US
Contact:
(626) 405-2191
reference@huntington.org
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