The Raymond E.F. Larsson Papers at the University of Notre Dame

Raymond Edward Francis "Ellery" Larsson (b. 1901) was an American Catholic poet in the 1920's and 1930's, although he continued to publish up into the 1960's and to write poetry up until 1982. Kenneth Rexroth, author of American Poetry in the Twentieth Century (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971) called him "the best Catholic poet of his time and the best of the early followers of T.S. Eliot" (p. 96). Notre Dame has his works O City, Cities (1929), Wherefore Peace (1932), Weep and Prepare: Selected Poems 1926-1939 (1940), Saints at Prayer (1942), and Book Like a Bow Curved (1961) in its library collections. In 1983, the Director of Rare Books and Special Collections, Anton Masin, wrote Raymond Larsson: A Forgotten American Poet (M.A. thesis, University of Notre Dame, 1983) on Larsson's work after having run a special exhibition on Larsson from June to September of 1983. Attached to this brief summary is a copy of Larsson's biography which Masin prepared for the exhibition; the original is filed with Masin's correspondence.

Masin was the first scholar to take advantage of the University's manuscript collection of 4846 pages of Larsson's poetry: four file boxes of poetry written between 1920 and 1982, often sent as correspondence, mostly in longhand; one file box of prepared manuscripts; and one box of poetry manuscripts from his friends and fellow poets August Derleth, Hiram Dilworth, and Theodore Maynard. There are also two boxes of miscellaneous printed material, one of which includes journals and clippings from magazines and newspapers in which Larsson's poetry appeared; one sign of the regard in which his work was held is a copy of Transition magazine from 1927 (filed with the printed material), in which his work appears along with that of James Joyce, Kay Boyle, Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, André Gide, and Archibald MacLeish. The poetry is organized by year only.

Larsson was also a prolific correspondent; the collection has 3661 pages of letters to, from, and about him. The collection includes two boxes of Larsson's correspondence with such figures as Kay Boyle, Padraig Colum, e.e. cummings, Dorothy Day, Muriel Draper, Robert Lowell, Archibald Macleish, Thomas Merton, Harriet Monroe (founder of Poetry magazine), Elizabeth Patterson, Theodore Roethke, Allen Tate, Mark Van Doren, and Margaret Widdener. The collection also includes four boxes of Larsson's correspondence with George Dangerfield ("Geo" as he affectionately refers to him), a longtime friend and editor of Vanity Fair. The letters are organized chronologically. Larsson was also inspired by abstract art; the library has 767 drawings of miscellaneous shapes and sizes, mostly from the 1940's and the 1950's, filed in two boxes. After his 1932 conversion to Catholicism, Larsson tended to use pre-Vatican II saints' days as his dates in some poetry and letters, so the researcher may wish to have a comprehensive reference work on Catholic saints available for assistance in dating Larsson's papers.

Larsson was a close friend of former English professor Norbert Engels, originally from Larsson's native Green Bay, which is one reason why the University has so much of Larsson's material; Larsson left poetry and correspondence around the country wherever he had acquaintances. Fortunately, Masin's correspondence contains copies of much of the material deposited at the Library of Congress, Princeton University, the New York Public Library, and the Brown County Library in Wisconsin. The University is also fortunate to have two cassette tapes on which Prof. Engels speaks about Larsson; one contains Engels's own reflections and the other is an interview between Engels and Masin. These are filed with the Engels correspondence.

Prepared by Brian McFadden, 8/98