The collection consists of the manuscripts of Theodore Maynard and his correspondence with publishers, family members, and numerous literary figures. The collection also includes the manuscripts of Sara Casey Maynard and the original artwork and manuscripts she gathered for a projected children's magazine. A few photographs, newspaper clippings and printed items are also contained in the collection.
Included with the collection are over one hundred letters written by literary critic Van Wyck Brooks. Other notable pieces of correspondence are letters by Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, Padriac and Mary Colum, Ruth Pitter, Ridgeley Torrence, William Butler Yeats and Aldous Huxley.
Diaries and notebooks of Theodore Maynard are included with his manuscripts. Various drafts of typed and autograph manuscripts are present for his poetry, essays, short stories, reviews and books. Materials gathered for his autobiography, The World I Saw, are included with the manuscript.
Manuscripts written by people other than Maynard are also included with the collection. Notable among these are manuscripts and correspondence written by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop "Mother Mary Alphonsa, O.S.D.," the daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne. These were used by Maynard in writing A Fire Was Lighted, a biography of Lathrop. Lathrop converted to Catholicism and opened Rosary Hill Home for Incurable Cancer. The manuscripts contained here are reminiscences of her childhood and travels in Europe.
The final series of the collection contains manuscripts written by Sara Casey Maynard including the one-act play, Brady. Also in the series are items she collected to be made into the first issue of a children's magazine including a manuscript of a poem by Walter de la Mare and original pen and ink drawings by many artists including R.F.C. Waudby.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES: Theodore Maynard was born in 1890 to English parents, Thomas and Eliza Maynard, who were at the time Salvation Army Officers in India. Maynard was educated in England and first visited the United States in 1909. His first book, Laughs and Whifts of Song, was published when he was twenty-five. It was the beginning of a long literary career, in which he went on to write more than forty books of poetry, biography and history. He was living in London when he met his wife, Sara Casey, in 1918. Two years after they were married, the couple moved to the United States where they raised seven children and Theodore worked as a college professor. He gained his B.A. from Fordham University, his M.A. from Georgetown University and his Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America. His professorship at Georgetown, where he served as Head of the English department, lasted from 1928 to 1933. In addition to teaching he was continually writing and lecturing on a wide array of literary topics. Sara Maynard died in 1945. At the time of her death, Theodore was living in a sanatorium as a tuberculosis patient. He recovered and remarried in 1946 to Kathleen Sheehan. He died at the age of sixty-five in 1956.
Sara Katherine Casey Maynard was born in 1889 in South Africa to Irish parents, Patrick and Margaret Casey. Before her marriage to Theodore Maynard in 1918, she sustained a literary career including a published novel and a comedy, Brady, produced by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. She also began collecting stories, poems and artwork to be compiled for a children's magazine. In 1920 she moved with her husband to the United States where they raised seven children: Michael, Paul, Philip, Rosemary, Christine, Clare, and Kevin. She continued to write poetry and produced a book for children, Princess Poverty. Sara Casey Maynard died of tuberculosis in 1945.
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ABBREVIATIONS:
ACS - Autograph Card Signed
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
AM - Autograph Manuscript
AMS - Autograph Manuscript Signed
b/w - Black and White (Photograph)
TL - Typed Letter
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
TM - Typed Manuscript
ACCESSION DATA:
Status: Open
Provenance: Gift of the Estate of Kathleen Maynard, 1977.
Processed
by Heidi Rubenstein, April 2006.
BULK DATES: 1930 - 1955
SPAN DATES: 1910 - 1974
EXTENT: 15 boxes