Call Number:

C0268

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 111 boxes
• 37.03 linear feet

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

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

Date:

1915-1971 (inclusive) and 1935-1970 (bulk)

Creator:

Ullman, James Ramsey (1907-1971)

Form:

Correspondence, American diaries -- 20th century., Fiction., and Photoprints.

Abstract:

Consists of the extant papers of James Ramsey Ullman (Princeton Class of 1929), American novelist, theatrical producer, world traveler, and mountain climber. Included are manuscripts of most of his major works, many shorter works, correspondence, and subject files.

James Ramsey Ullman was an American novelist, theatrical producer, world traveler, and mountain climber. Born in New York in 1907, Ullman attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and graduated from Princeton University in 1929. After graduation, Ullman moved to Brooklyn, where he worked as a reporter and features writer at a newspaper. He soon left the newspaper to produce theatre, launching such productions as Faraway Horses, Men in White, Blind Alley, and The Milky Way. After a string of failed productions, Ullman traveled to the Amazon and published a travelogue, The Other Side of the Mountain, upon his return to America. He took a job with the Federal Theatre and turned to freelance writing, producing short stories and articles on mountain climbing, one of his greatest hobbies. He penned a book on the subject titled High Conquest in 1941. Ullman died in 1971.

The papers of Ullman (Princeton Class of 1929) contain manuscripts of most of his major works, many shorter works, correspondence, and subject files. Included are nine nonfiction works, such as High Conquest (Phila.: J.B. Lippincott, 1941), Americans On Everest, and Mad Shelley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1930); ten novels, including The Day on Fire (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1958), based on the life of Rimbaud, The Sands of Karakorum (Phila.: J. B. Lippincott, 1953), and The White Tower (Phila.: J. B. Lippincott, 1945); twelve plays; and numerous articles, short stories, and poems. In addition, there are diaries (1920-1971), financial papers, documents, photographs, magazines containing his works, and papers of other persons, where plays produced by Ullman, but written by Lynn Root, Irving Ramsdell, and others, have been filed.

Ullman's correspondence contains letters of fellow adventurers, family, and friends, such as Norman Dyhrenfurth, Temple Fielding, Robert Kaufman, J. Monroe Thorington, and Alexander F. Ullman (his father, who lived in New York City), as well as fan mail from 1935 to 1971. The subject files reflect his interests in mountaineering, Robert Kaufman, world travel, and literature, and include notes, letters, and printed matter pertaining to the American Mt. Everest expedition (1963), of which Ullman was a member, the American Field Service, Broadway shows of the 1930s, and travel brochures and itineraries to the South Pacific, Africa, South America, and other global points.