Stuart Wright Collection: James Wright Papers

1981-1990
Manuscript Collection #1169-061
Creator(s)
Wright, Anne (Edith Anne); Wright, James, 1927-1980; Cole, Henri
Physical description
0.25 Cubic Feet, 1 archival box, 8 items, 14 p.
Preferred Citation
Stuart Wright Collection: James Wright Papers (#1169-061), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.
Repository
ECU Manuscript Collection
Access
No restrictions

Papers of James Wright (1981-1990), documenting the life and literary career the noted Martins Ferry, Ohio-born American poet of the postmodern era; consisting of a copy of the James Wright Memorial Issue of Envoy Magazine (Spring-Summer 1981), edited by Henri Cole, published by the Academy of American Poets; also including loose manuscript items transferred from a book in the Stuart Wright Book Collection, entitled Saint Judas, (1939), by James Wright consisting of correspondence between Anne [Mrs. James A.] Wright and Stuart Wright concerning possible publication of Wright's work entitled Mosaic of a Journey.


Biographical/historical information

James Wright was born James Arlington Wright, on 13 December 1927, in Martins Ferry, Ohio. After serving in the US Army during World War II, Wright attended Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio, where he studied under John Crowe Ransom. He graduated from Kenyon, with honors, in 1952, and studied for a year in Vienna on a Fulbright fellowship. After returning to the US, he received his MA and later his Ph.D. from the University of Washington, where he studied under Theodore Roethke. It was during his first year in graduate school that Wright had his first book published: The Green Wall (1957). He earned his Ph.D. with a dissertation on Charles Dickens and his second collection of poetry Saint Judas (1959) in the Yale Younger Poets series was published soon after. During this period, he began writing reviews for The Sewanee Review and regularly contributed to important journals like The New Yorker.

Wright's works often dealt with the disenfranchised or outsiders in society. This may be due to the fact that he suffered from life-long struggles with depression, bipolar mood disorders, and alcoholism. Because of his disorders he had several breakdowns and was hospitalized and subjected to electroshock therapy.

In 1966, Wright began teaching at Hunter College. It was during these years that he became known as one of the greatest of American postmodern poets. During his years at Hunter, he earned a Rockefeller Foundation grant. He also won the Pulitzer Prize (1972) for his Collected Poems (1971). Later, his son, Franz Wright, also won the Pulitzer Prize, making them the only parent/child pare to win the prize in the same category.

In 1979 wright was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue. He died on 25 March 1980 shortly after finishing his manuscript This Journey (1982).

Sources:

"James Wright: Biographical Sketch", by Edward Brunner, University of Illinois English Department. Accessed November 04, 2016. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/j_wright/bio.htm.

"James Wright (poet)". [Biographical Sketch]. Wikipedia. Accessed November 04, 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wright_(poet).

"James Wright". [Biographical Sketch]. Britannica Online Encyclopedia. http://www.britannica.com/print/article/649500.

Author: Jonathan Dembo, with the assistance of John Leche, 11/4/1016.

Stuart Wright collected and compiled the James Wright Papers. He was born, Stuart Thurman Wright, 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 106 sub-collections of the papers of Southern American writers, illustrators, composers, and publishers. 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

The Stuart Wright Collection: James Wright Papers are arranged in original order in 2 series.

Series 1: Cary Addition #1 to the Stuart Wright Collection consists of papers (1981) documenting the life and literary career of James Arlington Wright (1926-1980), the noted American poet of the postmodern era; consisting of a pamphlet entitled Envoy: James Wright Memorial Issue (1981). Source: Cary Addition Box #074.000. Series 1 is held in Box 1.a

Series 2: Ludlow Addition #2 to the Stuart Wright Collection consists of papers (1984-1990) documenting the life and literary career of James Arlington Wright (1926-1980), the noted American poet of the postmodern era; consisting of a loose manuscripts items transferred from Saint Judas, by James Wright (1939) including correspondence between Anne [Mrs. James A.] Wright and Stuart Wright concerning possible publication of Wright's work entitled Mosaic of a Journey. Source: Cary Addition Box #074.060. Series 2 is held in Box 1.b.


Administrative information
Custodial History

27 October 2011, (Cary Addition #1), 0.02 cubic feet; 0.25 archival box; 1 item; 4 p. Papers (1981) documenting the life and literary career of James Arlington Wright (1926-1980), the noted American poet of the postmodern era; consisting of a pamphlet entitled Envoy: James Wright Memorial Issue (1981). Source: Cary Addition Box #074.000. Vendor: Stuart Wright.

20 July 2012, (Ludlow Addition #2), 0.23 cubic feet; 0.75 archival box; 7 items; 10 p. Papers (1984-1990) documenting the life and literary career of James Arlington Wright (1926-1980), the noted American poet of the postmodern era; consisting of a loose manuscripts items transferred from Saint Judas, by James Wright (1939) including correspondence between Anne [Mrs. James A.] Wright and Stuart Wright concerning possible publication of Wright's work entitled Mosaic of a Journey. Source: Cary Addition Box #074.060. 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 & Jay Colin Menees, 12/8/2015, 3/29/2016; Final inventory by Jonathan Dembo, 2/15/2016, 8/26/2016; Finding aid by Jonathan Dembo, 11/2/2016; Biographical Sketch, by Jonathan Dembo with the assistance of Dale Wetterhahn & John Leche, 4/26/2016, 11/2/2016, 11/4/2016, rev. 2/8/2017; Encoding revised by Jonathan Dembo, 2/8/2017.

Copyright notice

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


Language of material

English

Key terms
Personal Names
Wright, Anne (Edith Anne)
Wright, James, 1927-1980
Wright, Stuart, 1948---Correspondence
Topical
Poets, American--20th century
Women authors, American--20th century

Container list
Box 1 Folder a Envoy : James Wright Memorial Issue, Edited by Henri Cole ; Published semi-annually by Academy of American Poets, New York, NY. (Spring - Summer 1981) Pamphlet. 1 item. 4 p. ; Note : Photograph of James Wright on p. 1 ; include biographical sketch of Wright by his widow Annie Wright ; Source : Cary Addition Box #074.000
Box 1 Folder b Saint Judas, by James Wright (© 1939) Note : 1) Anne [Mrs. James A.] Wright, New York, NY. Letter to Stuart Wright with thanks for agreeing to publish her manuscript, Mosaic of a Journey (17 Dec. 1984) TLS. 1 item. 1 p. ; 2) Anne [Mrs. James A.] Wright, New York, NY. Letter to Stuart Wright acknowledging receiving Mosaic of a Journey manuscript, have many photographs, leaving soon on trip to New Zealand, friends in common (12 Jan. 1985) TLS. 1 item. 1 p. ; 3) Anne [Mrs. James A.] Wright, Misquamicut. RI. Letter to Stuart Wright acknowledging return to manuscript of Mosaic of a Journey, very encouraging comments, recommendations (23 July 1985) TLS & Envelope. 1 item. 2 p. ; 4) Anne [Mrs. James A.] Wright, New York, NY. Letter to Stuart Wright saying she will send manuscript early in 1986, thanks for interest, time and comments on Mosaic of a Journey, will soon return to teaching (2 Sept 1985) TLS & Envelope. 1 item. 2 p. ; 5) Anne [Mrs. James A.] Wright, New York, NY. Letter to Stuart Wright saying she will re-send manuscript of Mosaic of a Journey for re-consideration (24 Jan. 1986) TLS & Envelope. 1 item. 2 p. ; 6) Anne [Mrs. James A.] Wright, New York, NY. Letter to Stuart Wright saying she is sorry he will not publish Mosaic of a Journey, thanking him for time and support (13 March 1986) TLS. 1 item. 1 p. ; 7) [Interview with W. D. [William DeWitt] Snodgrass, by E. S.] American Poetry Review (July / Aug. 1990), pp. 45 - 46. Clipping. 1 item. 1 p. ; Source : Ludlow Addition Box #177.060