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.

  • How Sinclair Lewis Invented Donald Trump (New Haven Independent)

    July 29, 2022

    To find out more about Lewis’s effort to predict such dire circumstance, I became a denizen of the Beinecke, the 1963 building of translucent marble and granite on Yale’s Hewitt Quadrangle. Here, there are priceless relics available to examine by any visitor. These include one of the few extant copies of the original Gutenberg Bible and John James Audubon’s The Birds of America.

  • Student curator Gabrielle Colangelo ’22 brings obscured lesbian histories to light

    June 6, 2022

    For her exhibition, “We Are Everywhere: Lesbians in the Archive,” now on view in Sterling Memorial Library, student curator Gabrielle “Gabby” Colangelo ’22, began by asking questions. “Why are there so few lesbians represented in Yale’s archives? And who is Silvia Dobson, this unknown woman who appears so prominently in my search results?”

  • Six faculty members honored for ‘transformational’ classroom instruction

    May 5, 2022

    Students who nominated the six Yale faculty members awarded this year’s Yale College teaching prizes on May 5 used many different adjectives to praise their instructors. But there was one overarching theme in their comments: All of the prizewinners were credited with being “transformational” in their students’ lives — in the classroom and beyond.

  • Behrens releases Cook film (Independence Bulletin Journal )

    April 22, 2022

    Roy Behrens, Emeritus Professor of Art at the University of Northern Iowa and Independence native, has released a new 60-minute online documentary film about Iowa expatriate artist William Edwards Cook, and his close long-term friendship with American writer Gertrude Stein ... there are 250 pages of letters between Cook and Stein in the Beinecke Library at Yale University, in which they often talk about Independence ...

  • You’ve enjoyed the parks he designed. Meet the creator at 200 years old (New Haven Register)

    April 16, 2022

    Famous in his day for his writing and lecturing on his European travels, Donald Grant Mitchell thought of himself much more as an urban farmer and landscape architect, a lover of beauty in all its forms. But while the Westville branch of the New Haven Free Public Library is named for him, Mitchell’s name is barely known by those who enjoy East Rock and Edgewood parks, which he designed.

  • Encore (Daily Nutmeg)

    April 1, 2022

    On a recent Saturday in the newly reopened Beinecke Library, Brava! Women Make American Theater was finally getting its time in the spotlight. Directed by curator Melissa Barton, the exhibition presents “scenes” of women’s contributions to US theater from 1787 to 2007, “highlight[ing] how stage performance often mirrored, but also frequently challenged and changed, understandings of women’s roles and of women’s rights in larger U.S. society,” while inviting “viewers to pose and consider questions about what is at stake for gender and performance at various moments.” Brava! is cleverly arranged so viewers can begin anywhere