Stuart Wright Collection: Karl Shapiro Papers

1945-1984 (Bulk: 1984); 1984
Manuscript Collection #1169-083
Creator(s)
Shapiro, Karl, 1913-2000
Physical description
0.25 Cubic Feet, 1 archival box, 8 items, 167 p.
Preferred Citation
Stuart Wright Collection: Karl Shapiro Papers (#1169-083), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.
Repository
ECU Manuscript Collection
Access
No restrictions

Papers (1945-1984 [Bulk: 1984]) documenting the life and literary career of Karl [Jay] Shapiro (1913-2000), the noted Baltimore, Maryland-born American poet, critic, and educator, consisting of an unbound page proof of Love and War, Art and War (1984) by Karl Shapiro; also containing loose manuscript items transferred from the Stuart Wright Book Collection relating to Collected Poems, 1940-1979 (1945-1984), New and Selected Poems (1984), and To Abolish Children and Other Essays (1984) by Karl Shapiro.


Biographical/historical information

Karl Shapiro was born Carl Jay Shapiro, on 10 November 1913, in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1920, he changed his name, legally, to "Karl". Shapiro graduated from Baltimore City College High School in 1931. He then attended the University of Virginia from 1932-33, but left after finding out how hostile the school was towards Black and Jewish people. He wrote in his poem, University, that "to hate the Negro and avoid the Jew is the curriculum." He then attended Johns Hopkins University where he studied from 1937 to 1939.

During the World War II, Shapiro served in the U.S. Army. While fighting in the Pacific Theater, Shapiro began writing poetry. His collection V-Letter and Other Poems (1944) was published while he was still stationed in New Guinea. This collection won him a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1945. After the war, Shapiro was named the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (now named American Poet Laureate) for 1946 and 1947.

Over his career, Shapiro published nearly twenty collections of poetry but none were as well received as his V-letter collection. He also wrote literary criticism, a screenplay, and numerous reviews and articles. While he wrote for most of adult life, he also edited Poetry Magazine from 1950 to 1956. He lectured in India for the U. S. State Department in 1957. Shapiro also had a long academic career, serving on the English faculties at numerous colleges and university, including the University of Nebraska, Lincoln (1956-1966), University of Illinois at Chicago Circle (1966-1968), and the University of California at Davis, 1968-1985.

In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Shapiro received many other honors, including the Jeanette S. Davis Prize and Levinson Prize, both from Poetry (1942); Contemporary Poetry Prize (1943); Guggenheim Foundation fellowships (1944, 1953); Shelly Memorial Prize (1946); Kenyon School of Letters fellowship (1956-1957); Bollingen Prize (1968); Robert Kirsch Award, L. A. Times (1989) among others.

Shapiro married Evalyn Katz in 1945. They had two daughters and a son, but divorced in January 1967. In July 1967, Shapiro remarried, to Teri Kovach but that marriage also ended in divorce in 1982. Shapiro died in New York, New York on May 14, 2000 at the age of 86. He was survived by his third wife, Sophie Wilkins (m. 1985).

Sources:

"Karl Shapiro". [Biographical Sketch] Wikipedia. Accessed 7 December 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Shapiro "Karl Shapiro". [Biographical Sketch] Gale Literature Resource Center. Accessed 7 December 2016.

"Karl Jay Shapiro Papers in the Charles E. Feinberg collection, 1930-1963 (#MSS40790)". 6.0 lin. ft. Manuscript Materials Section, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms013139

"Karl Shapiro Papers, 1917-1968 (#88-276)". 1 lin. ft. Hornbake Library, University of Maryland, College Park, MD. http://hdl.handle.net/1903.1/1526

Author: Jonathan Dembo, with the assistance of John Leche, 12/7/2016, 3/17/2017.

Stuart Wright collected and compiled the Karl Shapiro 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

Stuart Wright Collection: Karl Shapiro Papers (#1169-083) are arranged in original order in 2 series.

Series 1: Cary Addition #1 to the Stuart Wright Collection, consists of papers (1974) documenting the life and literary career of Karl [Jay] Shapiro (1913-2000), the noted American poet and critic, consisting of an unbound page proof of Love & War, Art & War, by Karl Shapiro. Source: Cary Addition Box #116.000. Series 1 is held in Box 1.a.

Series 1: Cary Addition #1 to the Stuart Wright Collection, consists of papers (1945-1984 [Bulk: 1984]) documenting the life and literary career of Karl [Jay] Shapiro (1913-2000), the noted American poet and critic, consisting loose manuscript items transferred from the Stuart Wright Book Collection relating to Collected Poems, 1940-1979 (1945-1984) New and Selected Poems (1984) and To Abolish Children and Other Essays (1984) by Karl Shapiro. Source: Cary Addition Boxes #172.031, 176.037, 176.034. Series 2 is held in Box 1.b-1.d.


Administrative information
Custodial History

27 October 2011, (Cary Addition #1), 0.23 cubic feet; 0.95 archival box; 1 item; 159 p. Papers (1974) documenting the life and literary career of Karl [Jay] Shapiro (1913-2000), the noted American poet and critic, consisting of an unbound page proof of Love & War, Art & War, by Karl Shapiro. Source: Cary Addition Box #116.000. Vendor: Stuart Wright

20 July 2012, (Ludlow Addition #2), 0.02 cubic feet; 0.05 archival box; 7 items; 8 p. Papers (1945-1984 [Bulk: 1984]) documenting the life and literary career of Karl [Jay] Shapiro (1913-2000), the noted American poet and critic, consisting loose manuscript items transferred from the Stuart Wright Book Collection relating to Collected Poems, 1940-1979 (1945-1984) New and Selected Poems (1984) and To Abolish Children and Other Essays (1984) by Karl Shapiro. Source: Cary Addition Boxes #172.031, 176.037, 176.034. 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, 2/18/2016, 5/13/2016, 9/30/2016; Final inventory by Jonathan Dembo, 8/30/2016; Finding aid by Jonathan Dembo, 9/30/2016, 12/7/2016; Biographical Sketch, by Jonathan Dembo with the assistance of John Leche, 12/7/2016, rev. 2/21/2017; Encoding revised by Jonathan Dembo, 2/21/2017, 3/17/2017.

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

Related material

Karl Jay Shapiro Papers in the Charles E. Feinberg collection, 1930-1963 (#MSS40790) 6.0 lin. ft., Manuscript Materials Section, Library of Congress, Washington, DC USA

Karl Shapiro Papers, 1917-1968 (#88-276) 1 lin. ft., Hornbake Library, University of Maryland, College Park, MD USA


Key terms
Personal Names
Shapiro, Karl, 1913-2000
Topical
Authors, American--20th century
Jewish authors--United States--20th century

Container list
Box 1 Folder a Love & War, Art & War [Book] by Karl Shapiro (Winston-Salem, NC : Stuart Wright, Publisher, © 1984) Page Proofs. Unbound. 1 item. 159 p. ; Note : Brittle, fragile ; Source : Cary Addition Box #116.000
Box 1 Folder b Collected Poems 1940 - 1979, by Karl Shapiro (© 1940) Note : 1) Karl [Shapiro], New York, NY. Letter to Allen [Tate] apologizing for not have written due to being "en route" to the US during most of the last year, now back at home, married, "really beginning the life I dreamed about in the Pacific". hope to settle in Washington, DC, enclosing part of his new book "Essay on Rune" for possible publication in Sewanee, Reynal & Hitchcock are "putting it out in the fall" ; also includes postscript by Evalyn [Katz] Shapiro (10 April 1945) ALS. 1 item. 1 p. ; 2) Random House, Inc., New York, NY. With compliments slip for Collected Poems 1940 - 1979 (ca. 27 April 1978) Printed form. 1 item. 1 p. ; 3) Palaemon Press Ltd., Winston-Salem, NC. Wachovia Bank Check no. 592 for $50 to Karl Shapiro (29 Oct. 1982) Printed form. 1 item. 1 p. ; 4) Karl and Sophie [Wilkins Shapiro] Postcard with Christmas greetings to Stuart Wright (14 Dec. 1984) ALS. 1 item. 1 p. ; Source : Ludlow Addition Box #176.031
Box 1 Folder c New and Selected Poems, by Karl Shapiro (© 1987) Note : 1) Leo Connellan Norwich, CT. Letter to Len Fulton, Paradise, CA telling him that Stuart Wright is publishing an edition of Shapiro's poems, requests that he be allowed to review this book for Small Press Review ; annotated in red ink : "Leo - Yes, by all means go ahead! Len" (20 Sept. 1984) TLS. 1 item. 1 p. ; Brittle, fragile ; needs conservation ; Source : Ludlow Addition Box #176.037
Box 1 Folder d To Abolish Children and Other Essays, by Karl Shapiro (© 1968) Note : 1) Karl [Shapiro], Davis, CA. Letter to Stuart Wright, enclosing inscribed copy of poem "Poet in Residence to Stuart Wright" dedicating the poem to Wright, requesting return of the enclosed photograph, his lawyer will be sending the releases (2 April 1984) TLS & Annotated typescript. 1 item. 2 p. ; 2) "Poet in Residence -- for Stuart Wright" [Poem] by Karl Shapiro, autographed "Karl Shapiro" on face, 20 copies have been printed for private distribution (© 1984) Broadside. 1 item. 1 p. ; Source : Ludlow Addition Box #176.034