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Collection Data
- Description
- The archive contains typescripts of Kazin's essays, books, unpublished biographical sketches, and lectures; more than 75 personal and literary journals; 13 literary notebooks; personal, literary and financial correspondence; two commonplace notebooks; extensive subject and biography research files (including especially extensive files on Herman Melville, the Civil War, Harriet Beecher Stowe, slavery, and African-American literature); examinations and reading lists for undergraduate courses taught by Kazin; research files on a large number of American literary figures; page proofs; photographs; correspondence from over 60 persons (excluding fan mail), including writers, critics, cultural notables, intimate friends, and family members; and correspondence from Kazin to over 250 recipients, including over 60 letters to Judith Dunford (Kazin's third wife), dating from 1977 to 1982.
- Names
- Kazin, Alfred, 1915-1998 (Creator)
- Anderson, Sherwood, 1876-1941
- Arendt, Hannah, 1906-1975
- Auchincloss, Louis (Correspondent)
- Baker, Russell, 1901-1979 (Correspondent)
- Bell, Daniel, 1919-2011 (Correspondent)
- Bell, Pearl Kazin (Correspondent)
- Bentley, Eric, 1916- (Correspondent)
- Berman, Paul (Correspondent)
- Bierce, Ambrose, 1842-1914?
- Birstein, Ann (Correspondent)
- Broyard, Anatole (Correspondent)
- Calisher, Hortense (Correspondent)
- Chomsky, Noam (Correspondent)
- Commager, Henry Steele, 1902-1998 (Correspondent)
- Cook, Richard (Correspondent)
- Davis, Hope, 1967- (Correspondent)
- Dickstein, Morris (Correspondent)
- Dos Passos, John, 1896-1970
- Draper, Theodore, 1912-2006 (Correspondent)
- Dunford, Judith (Correspondent)
- Edel, Leon, 1907-1997 (Correspondent)
- Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965
- Elman, Richard (Correspondent)
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882
- Erdrich, Louise (Correspondent)
- Faulkner, William, 1897-1962
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896-1940
- Ford, Richard, 1944- (Correspondent)
- Fussell, Paul, 1924-2012 (Correspondent)
- Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1908-2006 (Correspondent)
- Gay, Peter, 1923-2015 (Correspondent)
- Giroux, Robert (Correspondent)
- Gottlieb, Robert, 1931- (Correspondent)
- Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), 1822-1885
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864
- Hazzard, Shirley, 1931-2016 (Correspondent)
- Heilbroner, Robert L. (Correspondent)
- Heller, Erich, 1911-1990 (Correspondent)
- Hoagland, Edward (Correspondent)
- Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920
- James, Henry, 1843-1916
- Kazin, Alfred, 1915-1998
- Kazin, Cathrael (Correspondent)
- Kazin, Michael, 1948- (Correspondent)
- Kushner, Tony (Correspondent)
- Lewis, Anthony, 1927-2013 (Correspondent)
- Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865
- Lish, Gordon (Correspondent)
- Lurie, Alison (Correspondent)
- Mailer, Norman
- Mailer, Norman (Correspondent)
- Maxwell, William, 1908-2000 (Correspondent)
- Melville, Herman, 1819-1891
- Merrill, James, 1926-1995 (Correspondent)
- Mitgang, Herbert (Correspondent)
- O'Brien, Edna (Correspondent)
- Ozick, Cynthia (Correspondent)
- Roth, Philip (Correspondent)
- Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. (Arthur Meier), 1917-2007 (Correspondent)
- Schulberg, Budd (Correspondent)
- Steegmuller, Francis, 1906-1994 (Correspondent)
- Steinberg, Saul (Correspondent)
- Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896
- Styron, William, 1925-2006 (Correspondent)
- Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862
- Twain, Mark, 1835-1910
- Updike, John (Correspondent)
- Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937
- Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892
- Wieseltier, Leon (Correspondent)
- Yehoshua, Abraham B. (Correspondent)
- Dates / Origin
- Date Created: 1938 - 1999
- Library locations
- Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
- Shelf locator: Berg Coll MSS Kazin archive
- Topics
- Brownsville (New York, N.Y.)
- Israel -- Description and travel -- 20th century -- Anecdotes
- Russia -- Description and travel -- 20th century
- United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
- Civil rights movements -- United States -- 20th century
- God in literature
- Jews -- New York (State) -- Brooklyn -- Biography
- Jews -- Russia -- 20th century
- Modernism (Literature) -- United States -- History -- 20th century
- Religion and politics -- United States -- History -- 20th century
- Religion and politics -- United States -- History -- 19th century
- Slavery -- United States -- History
- Transcendentalism (New England)
- Genres
- Clippings
- Contracts
- Correspondence
- Diaries
- account books
- Notebooks
- Photographs
- Notes
- Biographical/historical: Alfred Kazin (1915-1998) was an American literary and cultural critic, essayist and historian. He was one of the most influential of New York intellectuals in the second half of the twentieth century, and belonged to the circle of writers and thinkers associated with the Partisan Review. Kazin's best-known work of criticism was On Native Grounds (1942), his seminal study of American prose and fiction of the period 1890-1940, and is also wel-known for his three memoirs, A Walker in the City (1951), Starting Out in the Thirties (1965), and New York Jew (1978). In 1996 he was awarded the first Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award in Literary Criticism. As of 2014, the only other award winner was George Steiner.
- Physical Description
- Extent: (95 linear feet); 191 manuscript boxes
- Type of Resource
- Text
- Still image
- Three dimensional object
- Identifiers
- NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b20155879
- MSS Unit ID: 22934
- Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): cd099690-995c-0134-9ae1-00505686d14e
