Call Number:

C0109

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 5 boxes
• 2.1 linear feet

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Louise Bogan Papers, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1936-1954 (inclusive)

Creator:

Bogan, Louise, 1897-1970

Form:

Poems -- 20th century., Essays -- 20th century., and Galley Proofs (Printing) -- 20th century.

Abstract:

Consists primarily of drafts, notes, fragments and final copies of American poet Louise Bogan's critical essays on modern literature, published in prestigious American journals. There are a few poetry manuscripts and even fewer pieces of correspondence.

Louise Bogan was born in Livermore Falls, Maine, in 1897. She attended Boston Girls' Latin School and spent one year at Boston University. She married in 1916 and was widowed in 1920. She was married again in 1925 to the poet Raymond Holden whom she divorced in 1937. In addition to publishing six highly acclaimed volumes of poetry and a number of collaborative translations, Bogan wrote and compiled three volumes of literary criticism. Her critical essays appeared in such periodicals as Nation, New Republic, and Partisan Review, and her "Verse" column was published regularly in The New Yorker from 1931-1968. She was reclusive and disliked talking about herself, and for that reason details are scarce regarding her private life. Blue Estuaries: Poems, 1923-1968, is an overview of her life's work in poetry. She died in New York City in 1970.

The collection consists of selected notes, drafts, holograph and typescript manuscripts, and correspondence of Bogan. Included are her translation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel Elective Affinities and a large number of critical essays concerning the works of W. H. Auden, R. P. Blackmur, Elizabeth Bowen, Isak Dinesen, Paul Eluard, Andre Gide, Goethe, Henry James, Ezra Pound, Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Rosenfeld, Paul Valery, Virginia Woolf, W. B. Yeats, and others. Also present are book and poetry reviews for the New Yorker; lectures on poetry; essays on folk art and literary criticism; poems and galley proofs for Poems and New Poems (1941); a small selection of poems by Herbert Cahoon; and correspondence containing some letters from Jerome Mellquist.