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Register of the William Everson Papers, 1937-1971.
Press coll. Archives Everson
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Table of contents
Title: William Everson Papers,
Date (inclusive): 1937-1971
Collection number: Press coll. Archives Everson
Creator: Everson, William, 1912-1994
Extent:
31 boxes (11.9 linear feet)
Repository:
University of California, Los Angeles. William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Los Angeles, California 90095-1490
Abstract: This collection contains items written by William Everson, primarily poems, correspondence, and drafts of manuscrupts (including
his autobiography). Other items such as ephemera and newspaper clippings are also held in the collection.
Physical location: Clark Library
Language of Material: Collection materials in English.
Source of Acquisition/Provenance
Gift, 1949 from William Everson.
Gift, 1960 from Robert Duncan.
Gift, 1962 from Doubleday Company.
Gift, 1962 from Brother Antoninus (William Everson).
Gift, 1971 from Lawrence Clark Powell.
This inventory is a simple listing of the contents of the boxes. Where poem titles have changed over several drafts, they
have been listed under the published title if known. In some cases the published title is listed with the first line. The
correspondence had not
been pre-sorted and arranged to the same extent as that of the poetry. While the letters to and from Edwa Everson, William
Everson's first wife, were separated from the others, all other correspondence was left a mixture of personal and professional
correspondence, not in any consistent order. The correspondence inventory lists names of correspondents
and the earliest and latest dates in any group. The organization and order have not been changed.
The inventory of the autobiography
Prodigious Thrust is a simple listing of the contents of the boxes. Original order has been followed as much as possible, with the exception
of removing the three complete working drafts and the final typescript from the original boxes and rehousing them separately.
The three drafts have been designated A, B, and C--not for chronological order, but rather for the order in which they were
originally found. Box 29, containing the "worksheets," has been kept in the original order, although divided into folders
for ease of handling. Everson says of the worksheets that the order "is roughly chronological, working from the bottom up,
but of course not strictly so, and it would not be wise to try to correlate chronologically by position in the heap." Box
30 has been kept in original order down to the folder level. A general contents description for each file has been given,
such as "worksheets" or "working draft." If the file contains some other item of interest, such as drafts of letters or a
poem not included in the autobiography, this has been noted.
In the 2010 revision of the finding aid, individual records were changed to separate item information out from the title field.
The contents of box 12 and a short biography of William Everson were added to the finding aid.
Collection is open for research.
Copyright has not been assigned to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA. All requests for permission to publish
or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of
the William Andrews Clark Memorial 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.
[Identification of item], William Everson Papers, 1937-1971, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California,
Los Angeles.
William Everson was born in Sacramento, California on September 10, 1912. He grew up on a farm outside Fresno and later attended
Fresno State College. Everson was a poet and author, literary critic, and small press printer. During World War II, he was
relocated to Camp Waldport (or Camp Angel) located outside Waldport, Oregon -- one of the Civilian Public Service camps for
conscientious objectors. While in the camp, he helped found the Untide Press with other objectors. The poetry inspired by
his time at the camp, 'The Residual Years' helped start his career in writing. He joined the Dominican Order for a period
of time, adopting the name 'Brother Antoninus' which he used as an alternate name throughout life. Everson lived the latter
part of his life near Santa Cruz, California (where he was the poet in residence at the University of California, Santa Cruz),
and later died on June 3, 1994.
This collection of William Everson's personal papers consists of manuscripts and typescripts of poems, correspondence, and
ephemera. Boxes 1-13 were given to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in 1949 by William Everson and contain a record
of Everson's life and work to that date. Boxes 1 through 7 are primarily poetry; boxes 8 through 13 are primarily correspondence.
It is likely that the typescripts and manuscripts of the poems were collected and arranged for the 1948 edition of
The Residual Years.
Boxes 14 through 25 consist of correspondence, newspaper clippings, working drafts of poems, proof pulls, galley proofs, magnetic
tapes of Everson (as Brother Antoninus) reading his poetry, and ephemera. This material was given to the Library over a period
of eleven years and from four different sources, Everson being one of them.
Boxes 26 through 30 contain William Everson's autobiography,
Prodigious Thrust, and consist of manuscripts, typescripts, three complete typescript working drafts, and one final complete typescript (all
with holograph
corrections). They were given to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in October 1961. The autobiography is contained
in five boxes, with the final typescript in a
binder. Boxes 26 through 28 contain the three complete working drafts; box 29 contains "worksheets" that Everson discarded
while completing his autobiography from the summer of 1955 through the summer of 1956. Box 30 contains manuscript and typescript
chapters from
both the first draft (
Fire on the Earth) and the final draft (
Prodigious Thrust), and Everson's notes on a variety of topics (mostly religious) that he eventually included in his autobiography.