John Berryman papers
Scope and Content Note
Collection contains manuscripts, notes, typescripts, galleys and proofs of works in poetry and prose. Also includes photographs, diaries, awards, financial records and other personal papers.
Dates
- 1908-1972
Language of Materials
English
Restrictions on Access
Access restricted; written permission required; consult the archivist for further information.
Copyright
Copyright retained by Berryman's family.
Biographical Note
John Berryman was a poet, scholar, and professor born in MacAlester, Oklahoma in 1914. Born John Allyn Smith, Jr., the poet spent a majority of his childhood in Oklahoma until 1926 when his father, John Smith, Sr., committed suicide. Shortly after his father's death, his mother Martha Smith remarried John Berryman and changed her to Jill Berryman. The poet also took the last name of his new stepfather, and the family moved to New York City.
Berryman attended Columbia College in New York City from 1932 to 1936. There he studied English under the mentorship of Mark Van Doren, who urged Berryman to seriously pursue poetry writing. His earliest published poems appeared in The Southern Review (1937), and his first publication of collected poems appeared in Five Young American Poets (1940).
Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet was the first work to garner significant critical attention. Published in 1953, Homage concerned 17th-century poet Anne Bradstreet; the work was complex in it's mixture of historical allusions and Berryman's own fantasies about Bradstreet and her life. His most significant contribution to the American poetic canon came in 1964 with the publication of 77 Dream Songs, the first of two volumes of short, three-stanza lyric poems. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the poems were praised for their range in language and tone, as well as Berryman's tight technical control.
Along with his accomplishments in poetry writing, Berryman was also an avid scholar and active professor throughout his career. He taught at several universities until he settled in Minneapolis in the mid-1950s as a lecturer in the Humanities Department at the University of Minnesota. His research interests included fiction writer Stephen Crane, Shakespeare and his dramatic works, and the work of his contemporaries. His biography of Stephen Crane was published in 1950; his essays on Shakespeare, Robert Lowell, Dylan Thomas, and other writers were collected posthumously in The Freedom of the Poet (1976).
John Berryman suffered from depression and alcoholism throughout much of his adult life, likely stemming from the trauma of his father's death and his turbulent childhood. In 1972 the poet committed suicide when he jumped from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His poetry is now considered exemplary of the Confessional poetry movement, as defined by the intensely personal poems of writers such as himself, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Robert Lowell during the 1950s and 1960s.
Extent
57 Cubic Feet
Abstract
Collection contains manuscripts, notes, typescripts, galleys and proofs of works in poetry and prose. Also includes photographs, diaries, awards, financial records and other personal papers.
Arrangement
The collection is roughly organized by material type including diaries, correspondence, prose, poetry, personal papers, photographs, etc.
Physical Location
Mezz (R68, D3, S7-8; R79, D1-D4, S4; R80, D8 S2-D9); Mezz (R79, D4, S1; R67, D7, S7) [unproc.]
Other Finding Aid
An unpublished, detailed finding aid is available in the archives. Please contact the archivist for details.
Acquisition
Purchase, 1972.
Notable Correspondents' List
This lists notable persons whose letters are located in Berryman's chronological correspondence. The list was created by staff as they processed the collection. The dates after the correspondents' name are the inclusive dates of letters; many correspondents also have undated letters.
- Aiken, Conrad 1959-1968
- Arrowsmith, William 1943
- Auden, Wystan Hugh 1939
- Arendt, Hannah 1948
- Bellow, Saul 1952-1971
- Benet, Stephen Vincent [undated]
- Bently, Eric 1960
- Bishop, Elizabeth 1945-1949, 1968-1970
- Bishop, John Peale 1939
- Blackmur, Richard P 1936-1943
- Bly, Robert 1956-1959
- Brandt, Joseph A. 1946
- Brinnen, John 1939
- Brooks, Cleanth 1937-1939
- Bynner, Witter 1959
- Campbell, Bhain 1938-1945 (plus many undated)
- Carruth, Hayden 1949
- Cavett, Dick 1970
- Cerf, Bennett 1935-1939
- Chase, Mary Ellen 1943
- Cowley, Malcolm 1935-1971
- Creeley, Robert 1950, 1961
- Damon, Samuel Foster 1967
- Decker, James A. 1939
- De Joug, David C. 1940
- Deutsch, Babette 1940
- DeVries, Peter 1939
- Dickey, James 1957-1958, 1970-1971
- Dillon, George 1939, 1948
- Eberhart, Richard 1939-1940
- Engle, Paul 1947-1949
- Fadiman, Clifton 1945, 1959
- Faulkner, William 1956
- Fitts, Dudley 1959, 1964
- Fitzgerald, Robert 1952-1966 (plus many undated)
- Fraser, Donald 1971
- Giroux, Robert 1936-1971 (bulk 1964-1971)
- Gray, C. H. 1945
- Greenberg, Alvin 1959
- Greenberg, Martin 1948, 1959
- Harris, Mark 1956
- Hardwick, Elizabeth 1949
- Hook, Sydney 1951
- Howe, Irving 1947, 1965
- Humphrey, Hubert 1971
- Hutchens, John E. 1947
- Jarrell, Randall 1946-1948
- Justice, Don 1954-1965
- Kazin, Alfred 1954
- Kennedy, Edward M. 1971
- Knopf, Alfred, Jr. 1949
- Krutch, Joseph Wood 1936
- Lee, Lawrence 1939
- Lowell, Robert [a.k.a. "Cal"] 1946-1970
- Lyons, Eugene 1942
- Lytle, Andrew 1963
- Maas, Willard 1939
- Mailer, Norman 1951
- McCarthy, Eugene 1969
- Merriam, Eve 1940
- Merwin, Bill 1956, 1971
- Miller, Merle 1947-1948
- Moon, Bucklin 1947-1949
- Moore, Marianne 1949, 1953
- Moos, Malcolm 1969-1971
- Moss, Howard 1958
- Naftalin, Arthur 1968
- Oates, Whitney J. 1949-1953
- Palmer, J. E. 1946-1948
- Parkman, Francis 1939
- Patchen, Kenneth 1939
- Phillips, William 1947-1948
- Pound, Ezra 1947-1949
- Pound, Omar (Ezra's son) 1947
- Powers, James Farl 1960
- Rago, Henry 1963-1966
- Rahv, Phillip 1939-1956
- Ransom, John Crowe 1939-1951 (plus many undated)
- Rich, Adrienne 1968-1970
- Roethke, Theodore 1939-1958
- Santayana, George 1951
- Schoren, Mark 1963
- Schwartz, Delmore 1939-1949
- Schwartz, Gertrude 1943-1944
- Shapiro, Karl 1939-1952, 1969
- Sharp, Paul F. 1970-1971
- Snyder, Gary 1969
- Stafford, Jean 1947-1948
- Stephan, Ruth 1948
- Stevens, George 1939
- Stewart, George W. 1946
- Steihl, Harry 1963-1966
- Swallow, Alan 1942-1949
- Swan, Emma 1940-1967 (bulk 1940-1942)
- Tate, Allen 1936-1971
- Thomas, Dylan 1938
- Untermeyer, Louis 1947-1949
- Van Doren, Mark 1934-1971
- Van Gelder, Robert 1944
- Wang, Arthur W. 1963
- Warren, Robert Penn 1936-1945
- Weaver, Raymond Melbourne 1936
- Weiss, Theodore 1948-1953
- Wheelock, John Hall 1948
- Whittemore, Reed 1970-1971
- Williams, Oscar 1939-1963 (bulk 1939-1944)
- Williams, William Carlos 1939, 1951
- Wilson, Edmund 1940-1959
- Wilson, O. Meredith 1962-1965
- Wright, James 1964 (not complete; noted as found)
- Yeats, William Butler 1936-1937
- Ziebarth, W. W. 1967
Processing Information
The collection was processed and the finding aid written by Craig Olson, student processors, and other Archives and Special Collections staff.
In addition to this finding aid, the books found Berryman's personal library has been cataloged. Individual titles and can be found by using the search term "Mss043" in the University of Minnesota Libraries catalog at www.lib.umn.edu.
- Auden, W. H. (Wystan Hugh), 1907-1973
- Bellow, Saul
- Berryman, John, 1914-1972
- Dickey, James
- Jarrell, Randall, 1914-1965
- Lowell, Robert, 1917-1977
- Poets, American -- 20th century -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Pound, Ezra, 1885-1972
- Ransom, John Crowe, 1888-1974
- Schwartz, Delmore, 1913-1966
- Tate, Allen, 1899-
- Thomas, Dylan, 1914-1953
- Van Doren, Mark, 1894-1972
- Yeats, W. B. (William Butler), 1865-1939
- Title
- John Berryman Papers
- Author
- Archives and Special Collections Staff
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Language of description note
- English
- John Berryman Legacy Finding Aid
Collecting Area Details
Contact The Upper Midwest Literary Archives Collecting Area