Scope and Content Note
The papers of John Hall Wheelock (1886-1978) span the years 1910-circa 2000, with the bulk of the material dating from 1954 to 1978. The papers consist of correspondence, drafts and copies of poems, speeches and articles, and miscellany relating largely to Wheelock’s poetry. Correspondents include Van Wyck Brooks, Marie Bullock, Padraic Colum, Max Eastman, Richard Eberhart, George Garrett, Jean Garrigue, Robert Graves, Jay B. Hubbell, Howard Mumford Jones, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, David McCord, Archibald MacLeish, Marianne Moore, Samuel Eliot Morison, Allan Nevins, Ned O’Gorman, Theodore Roethke, Allen Tate, Louis Untermeyer, Mark Van Doren, and William Carlos Williams.
An addition to the collection primarily contains letters written by Wheelock, as well as two letters from his wife, Phyllis E. De Kay Wheelock, to poet Henry Taylor. The relationship between the elderly Wheelock with the young Taylor was professional and one of friendship. The letters convey details of the final decade of Wheelock’s life. Also in the addition is a letter written by Wheelock to Helen C. Annan Scribner in 1927 and a collection of material, including some correspondence, from his second cousin Charlotte Salisbury.