Biographical/historical information

Eleanor Ross Taylor was born in Norwood, North Carolina on June 30, 1920. She attended the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina\UNCG, as an English major, and earned a BA there (1940). She later received a MFA in Creative Writing from Vanderbilt University (1942). She wrote several poems. Some of her stories in order of importance include the New and Selected Poems collection (1983), Days Coming, Days Going Back (1991), The Ribbon to Norwood (1971), and The Hoard (1974).

Her honors include the Shelley Memorial Award by the Poetry Society of America (1998), a fellowship with the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1998), the Library of Virginia's Literary Award for Poetry (2000), and the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry (2001). She was later elected for the fellowship of Southern Writers (2009). She also earned the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize (2009), William Carlos Williams Award for the year's best volume of poetry from a small or university press (2010), and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2010).

There are references in the manuscripts to letters and postcards received\sent by Stuart Wright. There are also letters from Jill Friesch of Palaemon Press, Sue Stuart of Shenandoah; The Washington and Lee University Review, George Braziller of George Braziller, Inc., and Karen Whitehurst of Skyline Magazine. There are references to authors Alan Williamson, Edward Hisoch, Lawrence Joseph, and Rachel Hadas. There are reviews by Allen Tate, Randall Jarrell, Robert Mazzaco, and Erica Jong. There are also references to the publications; the Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshare Publishing, the Michigan Quarterly Review, Heritage Printers, Inc., and the Modern Poetry Association.

Her husband was Peter Hillsman Taylor (1917-1994), the noted short story writer, novelist, biographer, and playwright, who also specialized in southern subjects (#1169-013). Her daughter, Katherine, and son Peter lived with her. Her two brothers James and Fred, sister Jean, son's wife Elizabeth, and granddaughter Mercedes were also part of the family. She died in Falls Church, Virginia on December 30, 2011 at the age of 91 years from Dementia. The collection includes materials from December 1940 to January 2002.

Sources: "Eleanor Ross Taylor." Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Ross_Taylor

"Eleanor Ross Taylor." Poetry Foundation. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/eleanor-ross-taylor

"Eleanor Ross Taylor." Enclopedia of Virginia. http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/taylor_Eleanor_Ross_1920-#sta...

"Eleanor Ross Taylor." Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/eleanor-ross-taylor-poet-of-womens-lives-in-the-south-dies-at-91/2012/01/10/gIQALoIdpP_story.html

"Eleanor Ross Taylor." University of North Carolina Greensboro, English Department. https://english.uncg.edu/undergraduate/BAprogram/objectives.html

"Eleanor Ross Taylor." Vanderbilt University Creative Writing Program. http://www.vanderbilt.edu/creativewriting/description-of-program/about-the-mfa-program/

"Eleanor Ross Taylor." University of North Carolina Greensboro. Inside. http://www.uncg.edu/inside-uncg/inside-history.htm

"Eleanor Ross Taylor." Best America Poetry. http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2012/01/as-a-writer-all-bets-were-off-a-eulogy-for-eleanor-ross-taylor-by-ross-taylor.html

"Eleanor Ross Taylor." Shendandoah Literary. http://shenandoahliterary.org/blog/2010/12/always-reclusive-eleanor-ross-taylor/

"Eleanor Ross Taylor." Poetry Society. https://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/awards/annual/winners/2010/award_9/

"Eleanor Ross Taylor." Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/Going-Coming-University-Press-Poetry/dp/0874803640

Author: Jonathan Dembo with the assistance of Alyssa Coleman, 11/2/2016

Stuart Wright collected and compiled the Eleanor Ross Taylor Papers. Wright was born on 30 March 1948 in Roxboro, North Carolina. He was the son of Frances Critcher Wright (1919-2010) and Wallace Lyndon Wright (1921-1965). An avid reader as a boy, Wright developed a strong interest in the American Civil War and with his father toured many of the war's battlefields searching for artifacts and studying the history of the era. At the age of 12, he won a statewide "Johnny Reb" essay contest and by the age of 15 had visited every major battlefield of the Civil War. Wright attended Roxboro High School, from which he graduated in 1966. It was during these years that he developed an interest in collecting historical books and manuscripts and began relationships with a number of local collectors and dealers.

In the fall of 1966, Wright enrolled at Wake Forest University as a pre-med, history, German and music student. Wright earned a B.A. in German and music in 1970. As a graduate student at Wake Forest University, Wright focused his studies on Southern history and literature, his ambition being to build an authoritative Southern Studies collection for the university. He received a master's degree in Southern Studies in 1973 and a second master's degree in U.S. History in 1980. Additionally Wright holds a professional degree from England in a medically related field. It was while studying there that he became interested in Thomas Wolfe, the noted North Carolina native and novelist.

Following his graduation from Wake Forest, Wright began to develop his collections more systematically, acquiring many first editions of Southern writers. In 1976 he began teaching at Reynolda House, a Wake Forest University affiliate dedicated to the arts and arts education. Wright taught classes in American music as well as human anatomy for art students. In 1978 Wright became Lecturer in Education at Wake Forest University. During his 10 years teaching at Wake Forest University, Wright authored numerous works of Civil War and North Carolina history, and dozens of articles, bibliographies, essays and reviews on Southern literature and the writers whose papers he collected. In addition, he developed a strong interest in the writings of the English poet Donald Davie and the Minnesota-born poet Richard Eberhart, whose works he also collected.

At the same time, Wright also began a career as a publisher by starting Palaemon Press in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. By 1984, Palaemon Press had produced 316 titles, consisting mainly of broadsides and limited editions, of the poetry and essays of such Southern writers as A. R. Ammons, Fred Chappell, James Dickey, William Goyen, George Garrett, and Eudora Welty. He also built comprehensive collections and compiled book-length descriptive bibliographies of A.R. Ammons, Andrew Lytle, Reynolds Price, James Dickey, William Goyen, Walker Percy, Randall Jarrell, Peter Taylor, George Garrett, Richard Eberhart, and Donald Davie. As well as serving as editor of the contemporary literature section of the Bulletin of Bibliography throughout the 1980s, Wright also contributed pioneering checklists of the writings of Southern poets Henry Taylor, Charles Wright, and Robert Morgan. For Meckler Publishing he served as series editor for a number of book-length bibliographies and checklists. In recognition of these accomplishments, when he was just 32, Wright was elected to membership in New York's prestigious Grolier Club.

All of these works are represented in the Stuart Wright Collection. In his dealings with these various authors Wright made consistent efforts to acquire personal papers, letters and documents, photographs, manuscripts, drafts, proofs, and published materials to supplement his continuing activities as a purchaser of their works. In this way, Wright acquired perhaps a majority of his overall collection. Over the years a number of biographers used Wright's collection to aid their research. For example, James A. Grimshaw, Jr. used the collection extensively for his Robert Penn Warren: A Descriptive Bibliography, 1922-1979 published by the University Press of Virginia, in 1981 and Craig S. Abbott did so as well for John Crowe Ransom: A Descriptive Bibliography, published by Whitston Publishing Company, Inc. in 1999. Joseph Blotner also used the Wright collection in researching Robert Penn Warren: A Biography, published by Random House in 1997.

Nevertheless, from the mid- to late 1980s, Wright began to look for a permanent home for his collection, which he felt had grown too large and yet had been too little used. Unable to find a repository willing to accept the entire collection under suitable conditions, he sold a number of individual author collections to Vanderbilt University, Duke University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Emory University. It was not until 2010 that he reached agreement to house the remaining, and largest part of his collection at East Carolina University. The Stuart Wright Collection in the East Carolina Manuscript Collection of J.Y. Joyner Library includes 22 sub-collections of the papers of Southern American writers. The related Stuart Wright Book Collection holds several thousand volumes by or about many of the same writers. Many of these volumes contain annotations, inscriptions, and insertions that reveal much about the authors in the collection and their relationships with one another. In 1998 Wright moved to England, and since 2001 he has resided in the medieval market town of Ludlow, in Shropshire.

Author: Jonathan Dembo, 11/2/2016

Scope and arrangement

Stuart Wright Collection: Eleanor Ross Taylor Papers, 1940-2008 [Bulk: 1989-2008], undated (#1169-027) document the life and literary career of Eleanor Ross Taylor (1920-2011). The Taylor Papers are arranged in original order, except as described below, in two series consisting of Cary Addition #1 & Ludlow Addition #2. Included in the collection are Manuscripts correspondence, typescripts, proofs of New and Selected Poems, printed materials, and loose manuscript items transferred from the Stuart Wright Book Collection.

Series 1: Cary Addition #1 to the Stuart Wright Collection is arranged in 4 subseries, 1940, 1983): Manuscripts, Correspondence & Typescripts; New and Selected Poems Files, Correspondence & Typescripts; Proofs of Taylor's New and Selected Poems; and Printed materials, including The Soul and Body of John Brown: A Poem, by Muriel Rukeyser (1940). Series 1 is held in Box 1.a – 2.a

Series 2: Ludlow Addition #2 to the Stuart Wright Collection is arranged in two subseries (1983-2008): Correspondence with Stuart Wright concerning her husband Peter Hillsman Taylor's papers (1983-2000), and loose manuscripts transferred from the Stuart Wright Book Collection (1989-2002). Series 2 is held in Box 3.b – 3.d

Administrative information

Custodial History

27 October 2011, (Cary Addition #1), 1.98 cubic feet; 2 archival boxes; 27 items; 442 p. Papers (1940, 1983) documenting the life and literary career of Eleanor Ross Taylor (1920-2011), the noted American poet, short story writer and literary critic, including edited manuscripts, proofs of published works & printed materials, including The Soul and Body of John Brown: A Poem, by Muriel Rukeyser (1940). Vendor: Stuart Wright

20 July 2012, (Ludlow Addition #2), 0.25 cubic feet; 1 archival box; 34 items; 84 p. Papers (1989-2008) documenting the life and literary career of Eleanor Ross Taylor (1920-2-11), the noted American poet, short story writer and literary critic, including correspondence with Stuart Wright concerning her husband Peter Hillsman Taylor's papers, and loose manuscripts transferred from the Stuart Wright Book Collection. Vendor: Stuart Wright

Source of acquisition

Purchased from Stuart Wright, 10/27/2011, 7/20/2012

Processing information

Processing, Preliminary inventory & Container List, by Jonathan Dembo, with the assistance of Nathaniel King, 11/25/2015; Final inventory by Jonathan Dembo, 3/17/2016; Finding aid by Jonathan Dembo, 3/17/2016; Biographical Sketch, by Alyssa Coleman; Encoded by Jonathan Dembo, 01/10/2017.

Copyright notice

Literary rights to specific documents are retained by the authors or their descendants in accordance with U.S. copyright law.

Related material

Eleanor Ross Taylor Papers, 1970-1972 (04/Mss132) 0.04 lin. ft.Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC USA

Stuart Wright Collection – Peter Hillsman Taylor Papers (#1169-013) Manuscripts and Rare Books Department, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC USA

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