Call Number:

C0831

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 60 boxes
• 2 items

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

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

Date:

1925-1994 (inclusive) and 1950-1990 (bulk)

Creator:

Houston, Peyton, 1910-1994

Form:

Correspondence., Notebooks., and Poetry.

Abstract:

Peyton Houston (Princeton Class of 1932) worked with the New York investment company Equity Corporation for forty years, while pursuing a career in poetry and freelance writing on the side. His papers include some of his poetry notebooks and drafts and manuscripts of his published works. The collection also contains his correspondence with family and friends, writers and publishers, and photocopied correspondence with Peter Yates. Some drafts of Yates' work and some personal memorabilia of Houston's complete the collection.

A member of the Princeton Class of 1932, Peyton Houston was a businessman who pursued a second career as a poet and freelance writer. Houston spent forty years as vice-president of the Equity Corporation, a New York investment company and through mergers and acquisitions transformed the company into Wheelabrator-Frye, Inc., a leading company dealing with environmental systems. Concurrent with his business career Houston maintained a lifelong interest in poetry and writing.

Publications by Houston: Sonnet Variations (Highlands, N.C.: J. Williams, 1962), The Changes, Orders, Becomings (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Jargon Society, 1990), For the Remarkable Animals (Providence, R.I.: Burning Deck, 1970), The Importance of the Unicorn ( Lawrenceville, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), Arguments of Idea (Penland, N.C.: Jargon Society, 1980)

The collection consists of the papers of Houston. His papers include many poetry notebooks spanning the years 1932 to 1994, drafts of several of his published volumes of poetry, such as Sonnet Variations (1962), For the Remarkable Animals (1970), and The Importance of the Unicorn(1992), and manuscripts of other poetical and prose works including chapters for an unpublished novel, Thomas Fantasy. There is correspondence (1925-1994) with his family, friends, writers, publishers, and organizations in which he had an interest, including Mildred Chase, the Greenwich Symphony, the Hill School, Peyton Harrison Hoge, his mother, Mary S. Houston, Dolores Kendrick, the New York Center for Visual History, for which Houston served on various committees, the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University, where Houston was involved in encouraging the interest in poetry at the University, and Jonathan Williams of the Jargon Society.