Guide to the Albert Joseph Guérard Papers M0048
Processed by Ralph W. Hansen & Brian Bethel
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
1998 ; revised 2018, 2021
Green Library
557 Escondido Mall
Stanford 94305-6064
specialcollections@stanford.edu
Language of Material:
English
Contributing Institution:
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
Title: Albert Joseph Guérard papers
Identifier/Call Number: M0048
Physical Description:
18 Linear Feet
(35 boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1930-1998
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Albert J. Guerard, 1963-1999: Accessions 1963-020 and 1999-139.
Gift of Albert J. Guerard Trust, 2003: Accession 2003-179.
Albert Joseph Guerard (1914 - 2000) was an author, literary critic, and professor of literature. In the course of his lifetime,
Guerard published nine novels, six books of criticism, a memoir, as well as numerous critical essays and literary reviews.
His published fiction included
Maquisard: a Christmas Tale (1945),
Night Journey (1950),
The exiles (1963),
Christine/Annette (1985),
Gabrielle (1992), and
The hotel in the jungle (1996). His nonfiction works included
Thomas Hardy: the novels and stories (1949),
Andre Gide (1951),
Conrad the novelist (1958), and
Triumph of the novel: Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner (1976).
Guerard was born in Houston in 1914 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University in 1934. His father, Albert Leon
Guerard (1880-1959), was himself a writer and professor who taught at Stanford from 1906 to 1913 and from 1925 to 1946. The
younger Guerard received his master's degree from Harvard University in 1936 and his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1938 after a year
teaching at Amherst College. Guerard then taught at Harvard from 1938 to 1961 before returning to Stanford to teach, where
he would remain until his retirement in 1985.
At Stanford, Guerard developed the university's first freshman seminar program and the Voice Project, a program that brought
professional writers to campus to teach freshmen. He also was the director of the Freshman English program from 1965 to 1967.
He succeeded poet and critic Yvor Winters in 1966 as the Albert Guerard Professor of Literature -- the chair named for his
father. He also developed Stanford's Ph.D. program in Modern Thought and Literature. Guerard's writing students included numerous
future published authors, such as Alice Hoffman, John Updike, John Hawkes, and Harriet Doerr.
Guerard married short story writer Maclin Bocock (1920-2002) in 1941, and the Guerards had three daughters together. In 1972,
the couple toured a traveling program on literature and writing entitled The touch of time for the National Endowment for
the Humanities, discussing the distorting process of human memory in locations such as public libraries, high schools, and
prisons. Maclin Bocock Guerard taught creative writing at Stanford from 1970-1973, and published short stories in various
literary magazines, including "The tree", which won a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award in 1987. She published two collections
of short stories:
Heaven lies about in 1993 and
Citizen of the world in 1999.
Albert J. Guerard received a 1977-78 Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for distinguished teaching and a 1983 Walter J.
Gores Award for excellence in teaching. In 1998, he received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts
and Letters. He died in 2000.
[Identification of item] Albert Joseph Guerard Papers, M0048, Dept. of Special Collections, Stanford Libraries, Stanford,
Calif.
The Albert J. Guerard papers consist largely of outlines, notes, research, drafts, galleys, and typescripts related to Guerard's
various fictional works. These often include several different drafts of a single work, with manuscript annotations and corrections.
Additional materials include offprints, articles, reviews, essays, lecture notes and various course materials from Guerard's
time teaching at Stanford University and Harvard University, as well as publicity, clippings, and reviews of Guerard's work.
Correspondence is often interleaved with book proposals and contracts, and for this reason all three have been collected in
a single series.
Materials within series are organized chronologically wherever the material is explicitly dated, and thereafter in the order
processed.
As the Guerard papers include material related to Guerard's wife, Maclin Bocock, and his father, Albert Leon Guerard, the
following abbreviations are sometimes used: 'AJG' for Albert Joseph Guerard, 'ALG' for Albert Leon Guerard, and 'MBG' for
Maclin Bocock Guerard.
Additional material related to Albert J. Guerard may be found at:
Albert Joseph Guérard papers addenda(M1072):
https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/4332644
Letters to Albert J. Guérard, 1970-1995 (MISC 0599)
https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/4084976
There are also two collections of research material assembled by Guerard:
Research materials on John Hawkes, 1959-1994
https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/4084479
Research Materials on Lya de Putti and Lois Moran, 1923-1996
https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/4084480
While Special Collections is the owner of the physical and digital items, permission to examine collection materials is not
an authorization to publish. These materials are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study. Any transmission
or reproduction beyond that allowed by fair use requires permission from the owners of rights, heir(s) or assigns.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Authors, American -- 20th century.
Box 33
Audiocassettes 1973-1995
Box 34
Audiocassettes 1973-1995
Box 35
Envelopes with listening notes