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Barry Wallenstein James T. Farrell collection
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Held at: University of Delaware Library Special Collections [Contact Us]181 South College Avenue, Newark, DE 19717-5267
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the University of Delaware Library Special Collections. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
James T. Farrell was born in Chicago on February 27, 1904. Farrell was raised in Chicago and attended the University of Chicago. A good portion of his fiction is set in Chicago and focuses on working class and intellectual characters. Farrell published more than twenty-five novels during his lifetime, as well as numerous collections of stories and works of criticism, but he is best-known for his trilogy of novels focusing on the character Studs Lonigan, and for a series of five novels centered around the character Danny O'Neill. Farrell was also active in contemporary politics and is generally associated with writers of the American left who emerged during the 1930s and 1940s. In his later years, Farrell devoted much of his writing to a cycle of novels titled
A Universe of Time which he began writing in the early 1960s and which he projected to approximately thirty titles. James T. Farrell died in 1979.Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2006. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2006. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC Additional information acquired from collection folder.
Barry Wallenstein is a professor of literature and creative writing at the City College of New York. Wallenstein met James T. Farrell in the early 1960s when he co-edited, with Jack Salzman, an anthology of 1930s writings entitled
Years of Protest. Farrell was the initiator and advisor for this project. Wallenstein developed a professional relationship with Farrell and traveled with him to the University of Pennsylvania where a collection of his papers were housed. After examining the materials for a either a Farrell biography or an edition of selected letters, Wallenstein was given the papers which now comprise this collection.The Barry Wallenstein James T. Farrell Collection contains 0.6 linear feet of articles, manuscripts, photographs, letters, and notes spanning the dates 1929-1974. This small collection includes manuscripts by James Farrell, copies of selected published writings by Farrell, four black and white photographs and copies of published articles about Farrell. Also included are writings on Farrell by Barry Wallenstein, as well as notes taken by Wallenstein on works by Farrell and writings related to him.
The collection is arranged by category of materials, beginning with writings by Farrell and moving to general articles about him and finally to articles about Farrell by Barry Wallenstein.
Boxes 1-2: Shelved in SPEC MSS manuscript boxes
Gift of Barry Wallenstein, February 2006.
Processed by Karalee Kopreski, April 2006.
Encoded by Jillian Kuzma, November 2008.
- Publisher
- University of Delaware Library Special Collections
- Finding Aid Author
- University of Delaware Library, Special Collections
- Finding Aid Date
- 2008 November 7
- Access Restrictions
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The collection is open for research.
- Use Restrictions
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Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce isrequired from the copyright holder. Please contact Special Collections Department, University of Delaware Library, https://library.udel.edu/static/purl.php?askspec
Collection Inventory
Folder includes five typescript manuscripts and one autograph manuscript. The manuscripts are written on various topics including Nikita Kruschev, the
Oriflamme magazine at St. Cyril's High School which Farrell attended, a carbon typescript copy of a short story entitled "The Fifth Amendment" by Jonathan Titulescu Fogarty (James T. Farrell), and a collection of short paragraphs on Farrell's stories and charactersFolder includes a selection of published articles and short stories by Farrell spanning the dates 1929-1975. Included is "The Filling Station Racket in Chicago" (1929), Farrell's foreword to Labor on the March, "The Writer and His Conscience" (1958), "The Day They Cancelled Christmas" (1965), "A Benefactor of Humanity" (1965), "The World I Grew Up In" (1966), a special number of the American Book Collector dedicated to Farrell (May 1967), "Reflections on John Dewey" (1967), "The Vast Present" (1969), "Picnic in the Steppes" (1971), "Literature of Clichés and Good-will" (1972), typescript of article with title "Messages in Art," "To Throw a High Hard Fast One" (1973), "Remembering the Chelsea" (1974), "The King is Dead" (1974), "The World is Today" (1975).
Folder includes four 10 x 8 black and white photographs taken by Barry Wallenstein. James Farrell, black and white 10 x 8, circa 1970. Three photographs of Helen Farrell (?) and husband Earle (?) in Florida, circa 1970.
Physical Description4 items
Folders includes copies and originals of published articles on James T. Farrell spanning the dates 1954-1974. Publications include Harper's, The New York Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, The New Yorker, and local newspapers. Also included is a copy of a typescript manuscript by Edgar M. Branch entitled "On the Criticism of Farrell and of Farrell Scholarship," and autograph notes on Horace Gregory's A History of American Poetry.
Folder includes carbon copies of typescript letters from Wallenstein to various recipients spanning the dates 1963-1974. The letters are concerned with Farrell's book proposals and more generally, publications related to Farrell. The letters from the early sixties focus on the production of an anthology of 1930s writing directed by Farrell and co-edited by Wallenstein. Also included is an undated, unsigned photocopy of a publishing agreement between Farrell and Collins Associates. Typescript copies of manuscripts by Wallenstein on Farrell's work. Included is a "Proposal for three books comprising a ‘James T. Farrell Package'" and three copies of an essay entitled ‘James T. Farrell: Artist of the Middle."
Folder includes typescript notes on Farrell books, including
Judith, New Year's Eve, Invisible Swords, The Silence of History, What Time Collects, Lonely for the Future, A Brand New Life. Also included are notes on William Shannon's The American Irish (1963) and Murray Kempton's Part of Our Time: Some Monuments and Ruins of the Thirties (1955).Folder includes autograph notes in various hands on James Farrell's writings, interviews of Farrell and related literary criticism. The notes are on specific publications and the title and dated is noted on each page. Notes are on various works, including A World I Never Made (1936), "The Social Obligations of the Novelist" (1947), "Testimony on Censorship: Transcript from Trial" (1948), and "A Farrell Miscellany" (1965). Includes notes on works by Theodore Dreiser, James Joyce, Mark Twain, and William Dean Howells. Also Includes printed undated invitation to James Farrell's birthday celebration.