Description of the Papers

The Norman Douglas Collection primarily documents Douglas's writing career. Although the collection spans the years 1864-1967, the bulk of the papers fall in the period 1920-50.

Series I, Writings, documents the creation and publication of many of Douglas's works. Correspondence, Series II, includes letters to and from Douglas and a substantial third person correspondence. Literary manuscripts and other papers Douglas acquired can be found in Series III, Subject Files. Series IV, Personal Papers, contains records related to Douglas's private life together with family papers. Material Related to Norman Douglas, Series V, is comprised of a variety of material, from published articles to radio broadcast scripts, about Douglas and his work.

Series I, Writings , found in Boxes 1-16, is arranged according to Cecil Woolf's A Bibliography of Norman Douglas (1954), which organizes material into three sections; Books and Pamphlets, Contributions to Books and Pamphlets, and Contributions to Periodicals. Within each section, works and editions are listed chronologically by publication date. Documents which can not be assigned to a specific edition are placed under "Unidentified editions." The arrangement of background material, drafts, and reviews follows the order of production. Series I primarily consists of: research material and notes, manuscript drafts, typescripts, galleys, printer's proofs, printed versions, clippings, and correspondence.

Research material comprises documents Douglas collected as background sources, while notes are papers he produced. Douglas made extensive use of newspaper clippings when writing Old Calabria and Siren Land, while London Street Games was based on scores of children's letters. Douglas's own notes can be found for Birds and Beasts and Some Limericks. An interesting document is Douglas's memo on the arrangement of Late Harvest, which was not printed as Douglas had hoped, in his lifetime.

Manuscript drafts exist for most of Douglas's later works. The majority of typescripts, galleys, and printer's proofs are extensively edited, although the presence of multiple copies with similar markings makes it difficult to discern the order of the drafts. In such contingencies the term "variant copies" has been used to alert the user. Typescripts, galleys, and printer's proofs were often inscribed by Douglas and given to friends, especially Kenneth Macpherson and David Jeffreys.

Almost every book represented in Writings has a clippings file containing reviews and advertisements. The documentation for several works includes business correspondence and fan mail. Fan mail predominates, as in the case of Old Calabria and London Street Games, where readers sent Douglas further information on his topic.

Other material in this series concerns dramatizations of Douglas's prose. There are notices of stage and radio performances, and a playscript for They Went.

Series II, Correspondence , housed in Boxes 17-30, is arranged in three subseries: Norman Douglas Incoming Correspondence, Norman Douglas Outgoing Correspondence, and Third Party Correspondence. The first two sections house letters to and from Douglas and cover both his professional and private life. Most of Douglas's correspondents were members of the literary world, and they discussed contemporary authors and their works. The English Review file concerns Douglas's editorial work, while the Grant Richards Ltd. Publishers file documents Douglas's role as Maurice Magnus's literary executor. Information on the publication of Douglas's own work is abundant. Correspondence with The Bookseller describes the copyright problems of South Wind, and the letters of Edward Garnett, Willie (William) King, Oscar Levy, and John Mavrogordato are filled with editorial advice.

With a few friends, Douglas's letters were more intimate. In his correspondence with Bryher, Martha Gordon-Crotch, David Jeffreys, and Kenneth Macpherson, he writes of the young men in his life. Series II also contains correspondence with these male companions (see Emilio Papa, Rene Mari, and Eric Wolton). Douglas wrote frequently to his son Archibald and the collection contains his letters from 1925 to Douglas's death in 1952. The letters discuss literature as well as Douglas's own writing and document the lives of Douglas and Archibald.

Third Party Correspondence, consists of letters to and from Robin Douglas, F. W. Hutchinson, D. H. Lawrence, Kenneth Macpherson, and Maurice Magnus. The letters of Robin Douglas and Kenneth Macpherson comment on the press's treatment of Douglas. Hutchinson's correspondence sheds light on Douglas's difficulties during World War II, especially Hutchinson's letters to Nancy Cunard.

Series II contains a large number of early twentieth century Italian postcards. Douglas sent cards depicting Italian sculpture and architecture to F. W. and Kay Hutchinson, Kenneth Macpherson, and John Mavrogordato.

Series III, Subject Files houses documents primarily related to other authors collected by Douglas and Kenneth Macpherson. This material has been arranged alphabetically by name and consists of written works, including typescripts of Maurice Magnus's and Giuseppe Orioli's books.

Series IV, Personal Papers , found in Boxes 33-38, is divided into Norman Douglas and Douglas Family. Although this series focuses on Douglas's private life, there is also material that probably relates to The English Review. Material on Douglas's funeral includes Douglas's instructions on the distribution of his property. A series of pocket diaries, which cover most of his life, act as a record of Douglas's correspondence. He daily noted to whom he was writing and often where he was traveling. The collection also contains six ornithological diaries dating from 1885-98. They record Douglas's bird watching in Germany and Austria.

Box 34 contains photograph albums and sets of photographs, most taken and annotated by Douglas and Pino Orioli on trips in Calabria and other Italian locations. Folder 565 contains photographs of the 1952 funeral and gravesite of Norman Douglas.

In the Douglas Family section, Elsa FitzGibbon's diary of 1901-02 provides a rare view of Douglas's married life.

Series V, Material Related to Norman Douglas , housed in Boxes 39-40, contains a variety of sources about Norman Douglas, his life, and his work. The articles and other material were probably collected by Douglas and Kenneth Macpherson. The documents cover the following topics: Capri, Collecting Norman Douglas, Norman Douglas (biographical and literary analysis), and Norman Douglas and his Circle (when Douglas himself is not the focus of the article). To facilitate use, longer articles have been listed separately under Individual Works, while the rest have been grouped under Subjects. The second section also includes reviews of several Douglas biographies. Reviews were often followed by "Letters to the editor."

Box 40a contains 6 folders of Provenance Material relating to Kenneth Macpherson's research on the value of the Douglas papers, including bibliographies, extracts from bookdealers' catalogs, and clippings.

Oversize, Box 42, contains oversize material from Series I, II, and IV in a parallel arrangement.