The records of the Bollingen Foundation are organized in two parts and span the years 1927-1981 with the bulk dating from 1945 to 1973. The foundation was established in 1942 by Paul and Mary Conover Mellon to publish books and fund scholarship in diverse cultural fields. Mary Mellon's ultimate concern was to present the translated works of C. G. Jung to an English-speaking audience. She also hoped to publish other works that would broadly trace the "history of man's soul." Foundation activities were suspended during World War II. Following Mary Mellon's death in 1946, the foundation continued under the direction of Paul Mellon with John D. Barrett as editor-in-chief of the Bollingen Series until 1967. Almost three hundred books were published from 1945 to the end of the 1980s. The Bollingen Series catalog lists one hundred titles, many of which are multivolume works. In accordance with Mary Mellon's wishes, the series ranges widely to include works on psychology, anthropology, archaeology, comparative religion, mythology, aesthetics, literary criticism, poetry, and philosophy.

During the war years the Mellons supported scholarship on a limited basis by awarding fellowships and grants-in-aid. Before 1946, publications in the Bollingen Series operated through another Mellon philanthropy, the Old Dominion Foundation. For administrative reasons, the Bollingen Foundation was created separately to finance the work that Mary Mellon envisioned. Between 1964 and 1969, financial support granted by the foundation to institutions was gradually phased out. Although the foundation was dismantled in 1973, the publishing program was continued by Princeton University Press until all works under contract were in print. Records documenting the transfer of the Bollingen Series production office and copyrights can be found in Part II of the collection.

Part I

Part I of the collection spans the years 1929-1981, with the bulk dated 1943-1973. It includes correspondence, memoranda, reports on publications and projects, applications, bylaws, minutes of meetings, financial statements, translations of essays, books, and poetry, newspaper clippings, and near-print and printed matter. The main administrative file, the Numerical Office File devised by foundation staff, includes records organized by subject such as the foundation's history (100s), fellowship program (400s), contributions to institutions for project funding (500s), and the Bollingen Series (600s). The 100s files include decisions on financial matters such as project allotments, salaries, subventions, and the foundation's general financial status, all recorded in the minutes of the meetings of the Finance Committee. The records document the genesis of the organization, its administration, the criteria used for determining grants and fellowships, and editorial matters. An alphabetical index to the Numerical Office File is located at the end of Part I.

Grants to institutions for scholarly undertakings and publications are recorded in the numerical 500s. Organizations receiving financial assistance ranged from the Foundation for Child Care and Nervous Child Help to the American Council of Learned Societies. Colleges and universities also received funds, often for specific publications or projects. Many subheadings in the 500s retain the foundation's "Data Sheet for Contribution," which lists, in part, the amount as well as the purpose of a grant.

The records of rejected applications for grants, fellowships, or publications, which had formerly been restricted, have been placed at the end of the Numerical Office File . The sequential arrangement of the main body of records is repeated and includes folders numbered from the 400s to the 600s. Reports by Wallace Brockway, Joseph Campbell, Siegfried Kracauer, and Elinore Marvel document the application review process.

Information contained in the Publishing History and Information series complements the 600s in the Numerical Office File . This series documents the problems associated with publishing Bollingen books, such as those relating to copyright laws, agreements with domestic and foreign publishing firms, and authors. Filed separately with this series are memoranda detailing the initial publication cost, royalty schedules, and cross-references to documents retained in other files bearing directly upon Bollingen Series publications.

Among the manuscripts retained in the records are the original translations from the French of Paul Valéry's work. Brief introductions for the annotated Valéry translations include those of T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Octave Nadal, Herbert Read, and Igor Stravinsky.

Correspondents in Part I include John D. Barrett, Huntington Cairns, T. S. Eliot, Abraham Flexner, Raymond Blaine Fosdick, Vaun Gillmor, Gotthard Günther, C. G. Jung, Erich Kahler, Siegfried Kracauer, Joseph Wood Krutch, Jacques Maritain, Paul Mellon, Erich Neumann, Maud Oakes, Paul Radin, Herbert Edward Read, Mary Ritter, Allen Tate, Mark Van Doren, Stanley Young, and Heinrich Robert Zimmer.

Part II

Part II of the collection spans the years 1927-1981, with the bulk dated 1945-1973. It contains administrative and production records from the Bollingen Series office. The file for John D. Barrett , editor-in-chief 1945-1967, contains miscellaneous material as well as correspondence and a small group of office records and personal papers. Some of Barrett's correspondence is in French.

The Princeton University Press file documents the 1967 transfer of the Bollingen Series publication office and copyrights to Princeton University Press. The bulk of Part II concerns the work of the production office.

The Production File of Part II is organized in three subseries: Manager's File , Office File , and Project File . Records in the Office File concern book and jacket design, preparation of illustrations and graphics, page makeup, omission or misplacement of material, and the correction of errors. The Office File also includes correspondence with authors and translators concerning production matters, particularly those relating to reprints, international publication, and revised editions. Most of the correspondence in the Office File is with copyeditors, printers, designers, engravers, suppliers, and the international group of publishers who produced separate editions, most notably Routledge & Kegan Paul in London, England. Correspondence for German, French, Italian, and Spanish editions is often conducted in the language of the publisher. The Project File includes proofs, galleys, and drafts, usually in typescript, of texts, notes, bibliographies, indexes, other front and back matter, and illustrations for most books in the Bollingen Series. Records are organized alphabetically by title of the book. The Bollingen Series catalog number is indicated parenthetically after each title for reference to a numerical list compiled by managing editor William McGuire which is appended to the register.

Records in the Office File relating to C. G. Jung include bibliographic notes and lectures delivered at the annual "Eranos" conference held in Ascona, Switzerland, and organized by Olga Froebe-Kapteyn, an associate and follower of Jung. The Project File includes typescripts of English translations and galley proofs, and printed matter altered by the translator, or editor, which document the publication of eighteen volumes in Jung's Collected Works .

Bollingen was the first to publish comprehensive English editions of the I Ching , a book of ancient Chinese divinations and commentaries; Plato's Dialogues , edited by Edith Hamilton; The Muqaddimah , a treatise on history by Ibn Khaldûn; works by Miguel de Unamuno; poetry by St.-John Perse (Alexis Léger) and Paul Valéry; Mary McCarthy's translation of Rachel Bespaloff's book, On the Iliad (1947); Vladimir Nabokov's translation with commentary and index of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (1964, 1971); W. H. Auden's translation of St.-John Perse's 1958 Nobel Prize address; and translations of Perse's poetry by Robert Fitzgerald.

Other books in the Bollingen Series include Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods (1953); Mircea Eliade's The Myth of the Eternal Return (1954), Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (1958, 1969), and Shamanism: Archaic Techniques in Ecstasy (1964); Dora and Erwin Panofsky's Pandora's Box (1956, 1962); and works in comparative religion and mythology by Joseph Campbell, especially Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949, 1968). The publication history of these books is reflected in the Office File ; drafts of the works can be found in the Project File .

The Bollingen Foundation supported archaeological excavation and interpretation in Samothrace, Greece, and various Egyptian tombs and temples, and studies of the reconstructed mosaics and frescoes of the Byzantine church, Kariye Djami, in Istanbul, Turkey. Files on books related to these projects are in the Office File and Project File of the Production File series.

Correspondents in Part II include Paul and Mary Mellon and others associated with the Bollingen Series publications office such as Huntington Cairns, William McGuire, Herbert Edward Read of Routledge & Kegan Paul, and Kurt and Helen Wolff of Pantheon Press. Correspondents among the Bollingen Series authors include Joseph Campbell, Kenneth Clark, Mircea Eliade, C. G. Jung, St.-John Perse (Alexis Léger), Vladimir Nabokov, Erich Neumann, Maud Oakes, Dora and Erwin Panofsky, Max Raphael, Natacha Rambova, Jean Seznec, and Heinrich Robert Zimmer.

Appended to the register is an alphabetical list of titles that notes the Bollingen Series catalog number. Following this is a numerical list of titles that indicates the names of authors, translators, and editors, and the dates of publication included in William McGuire's, Bollingen: An Adventure in Collecting the Past (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 296-309.

Part III

Part III of the collection spans the years 1943-1969, with the bulk dated 1960-1968. It contains correspondence, reports, charts, and financial records that provide an accounting of the Bollingen Series publication program and document its transfer from Random House (Pantheon Books) to Princeton University Press in 1967.