Yale Collection of American Literature

The Yale Collection of American Literature documents the creative lives, the artistic communities, and the literary achievements of American writers. The collectionis noted for its strength in nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first-century poetry, fiction, and dramatic writings. The archives of writers of diverse backgrounds underscore the collection’s interest in the indigenous and immigrant cultures that shape American literature.
  • Beinecke Top Tens: Ernest Hemingway

    February 23, 2013

    Ernest Hemingway Top Ten Photograph of Langston Hughes, Michael Koltyov, Ernest Hemingway, Nicolas Guillen, 1937, from the Langston Hughes Papers JWJ MSS 26...
  • African American Arts and Letters

    February 23, 2013

    Although the Beinecke Library is not an art gallery or museum, the visual arts have long played an informative role in literary life, just as they continue to...
  • Literary Intellectuals at Yale

    February 23, 2013

    Among the Collection’s holdings of literary archives are the papers of numerous twentieth-century literary critics, great intellectuals of their time. Chief...
  • American Prose Writers

    February 23, 2013

    A major American literary figure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Edith Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, awarded in...
  • American Dramatists

    February 22, 2013

    The Yale Collection of American Literature includes strong holdings in American drama — notably the work of four-time Pulitzer Prize-winner and Nobel Laureate...
  • James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection

    February 22, 2013

    The James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of American Negro Arts and Letters was founded in 1941 by Carl Van Vechten in honor of James Weldon Johnson (1871...
  • Nineteenth-Century American Literature

    February 22, 2013

    Noted for its bibliographic strength in nineteenth-century writings, the Collection includes first and other significant editions of virtually every major work...
  • Owen Franklin Aldis Library

    February 22, 2013

    Yale Collection of American Literature founder, Owen F. Aldis Y1874, made his mark as a Chicago real estate developer, and he was responsible for some of that...
  • Film in the Archive

    February 19, 2013

    There has long been a relationship between literary production and filmmaking — from the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West toiling away to...
  • The Modern American Novel

    February 19, 2013

    The work of the prolific American writer Henry Miller, an iconoclastic figure made famous by his “banned” book Tropic of Cancer (Paris, 1934; New York, 1961)...