Call Number:

C0862

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 60 boxes
• 26.4 linear feet

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Citations should be as follows: Quarterly Review of Literature Archives, Box #, Used by permission of the Princeton University Library.

Date:

1943-2000 (inclusive)

Creator:

Weiss, Renée Karol. and Weiss, Theodore Russell (1916-2003)

Form:

Audiotapes., Correspondence, Criticism., Fiction., Poems., and Short stories.

Abstract:

Consists primarily of the issue and correspondence files of the independent literary journal of the same name that was founded in 1943 by Warren Carrier, and co-edited and published from 1944-1999 by the husband and wife team of poet and former Princeton professor Theodore (Ted) and editor and author Renée Weiss. Also present in the collection are manuscripts of, and associated material from, eleven of Theodore Weiss's thirteen published books of poetry.

Renée Karol Weiss (1923-2021) was an editor, writer, musician, and dancer. Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to Abraham S. Karol and Elizabeth (Levitt) Karol, Weiss graduated from Bard College in 1951. She studied dance and violin, and was a member of multiple orchestras and music ensembles. Renée and her husband, poet and professor Theodore Weiss (1916-2003), edited the literary magazine, Quarterly Review of Literature (QRL), for nearly sixty years from 1944 to 1999. In their last years together, Renée and Theodore wrote poems together. The final QRL publication, The Always Present Present, (2003) was a collection of their jointly written poems, love letters from Theodore to Renée, and a biography of the magazine.

Theodore Russell Weiss (born December 16, 1916) was a poet, educator and editor, who, along with his wife, Renée Karol Weiss, edited and published the independent literary journal Quarterly Review of Literature for nearly six decades. Theodore (Ted) Weiss graduated from Muhlenberg College with an A.B. in 1938, and from Columbia University with a M.A. in 1940. He began his academic career at the University of Maryland (summer of 1941), then taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1942-44), Yale University (1944-46), Bard College (1947-66), and Princeton University (1966-87), where he was the William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor for Ancient and Modern Literature from 1977 until his retirement in 1987. Weiss' work was published widely, including the following books of poetry: The World Before Us: Poems, 1950-1970 (Macmillan, 1970), Fireweeds (Macmillan, 1976), A Slow Fuse: New Poems (Macmillan, 1984), and A Sum of Destructions (Louisiana State University Press, 1995). He died in April of 2003 in Princeton, NJ.

Consists of the records the Quarterly Review of Literature (QRL). An independent magazine, its editors originally published poetry, fiction, reviews, articles, and criticism of known and emerging writers. In 1948, QRL began focusing primarily on poetry, fiction, and plays, before switching solely to the publication of whole volumes of modern poetry in 1978 with the launching of the QRL Poetry Series. Theodore Weiss was professor of English and creative writing at Princeton University from 1967 to 1987.

Included in the collection are correspondence files with most of the magazine's contributors, such as Louise Bogan, Clarence Brown, Robert Coover, e. e. cummings, Roger Hecht, Jane Hirshfield, Edmund Keeley, Robert Lowell, William Meredith, James Merrill, W. S. Merwin, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Allen Tate, William Carlos Williams, James Wright, and Paul De Man. Also present are the QRL issue files containing almost complete files (1943-1999) of many of the manuscripts submitted for publication (with the exception of a few issues from 1944, 1945, 1974-1977, and 1981). Some of these manuscripts have author's corrections, such as Ralph Ellison's manuscripts for his posthumously published novel, Juneteenth (Vol. XIII). Other Ellison materials are present for "The Roof, the Steeple and the People," (Vol. X, No. 1/2-3) and "Night-Talk," (Vol. XVI). In addition, the collection also includes 11 magnetic audiotapes with readings of plays, including one, in Russian, with the voice of Boris Pasternak.

In addition to the QRL archives, there are manuscripts of Theodore Weiss's own papers, and manuscripts or corrected proofs for his works of poetry including The Catch (1951), Gunsight (1962), Fireweeds (1976), Recoveries (1982), and From Princeton One Autumn Afternoon: Collected Poems 1950-1986 (1987).