Scope and Content Note
Gerald Hewes Carson (1899-1989), a native of Illinois and graduate of the state university in Urbana, moved to New York in 1922 to found a broad and successful career in the mass media. Beginning as a reporter for the New York Herald, Carson soon left journalism for the advertising field, in which he rose eventually to become an executive in the nation's leading advertising agencies of the day. Decades later, he traded advertising for the world of historical scholarship and authored ten books and many articles concerning various aspects of American social history.
Carson's papers in the Library of Congress span the years 1854-1989, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1944-1985. The material is organized in three series: Correspondence , Speeches and Writings , and Miscellany . Comprised of correspondence, writings, speeches, lectures, scrapbooks, and research material, the collection chiefly reflects his work as an author and social historian. A group of scrapbooks in the Miscellany series documents his career in the advertising world as well as various milestones in his later career as social historian. A printed letter from 1866 by acrobat Jean François Gravelet Blondin is in the Speeches and Writings series.