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[Description and dates], Box/folder number, PCMS-0024, William Carlos Williams Collection, 1902-1960, The Poetry Collection, State University of New York at Buffalo.
See the Special Collections' preferred citations instructions for additional information.
Acquisition InformationSome donated by William Carlos Williams to Charles Abbott beginning in 1943. Other letters purchased from William Eric Williams around 1982.
Terms of AccessThe William Carlos Williams Collection, 1902-1960, is open for research.
CopyrightCopyright of papers in the collection may be held by their authors, or the authors' heirs or assigns. Researchers must obtain the written permission of the holder(s) of copyright and the Poetry Collection before requesting photocopies and/or publishing quotations from materials in the collection. Once permission is obtained, most papers may be copied in accordance with the library's usual procedures unless otherwise specified.
Processing InformationCollection processed by Poetry Collection staff.
Accruals and AdditionsNo further accruals are expected to this collection.
Known for his writing’s attention to the particular details of speech and location, William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century whose circle of associates includes a long list of modernist writers and artists. His works include Spring and All (1922), The Wedge (1944), Paterson (1946-1958), The Desert Music and Other Poems (1954), and Journey to Love (1955).
Totaling approximately 20,000 pages, the William Carlos Williams Collection contains manuscripts including the working papers for The Wedge (1944) and Books 1 and II of Paterson, early fragments, a working journal, and several drafts for the plays A Dream of Love (1948) and Many Loves (1942); and 1,200 letters of Williams’s correspondence to and from Charles Abbott, James Laughlin, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Louis Zukofsky, and others. These materials are described in Neil Baldwin and Steven L. Meyers’s The Manuscripts and Letters of William Carlos Williams in The Poetry Collection of The Lockwood Memorial Library, State University of New York at Buffalo: A Descriptive Catalogue (1978). In 1982 Williams’s letters to his son William Eric Williams were added to the collection. Supplementing these materials is Williams’s desk and typewriter and The Poetry Collection’s complete set of first editions of Williams’s books and virtually every book of Williams criticism.
This collection is arranged in thirteen series.
Container list in preparation.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Library's online catalog.