Charles Olson papers

Collection — Multiple Containers

Identifier: 1000-098

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This collection includes his correspondence, public presentations, poetry and academic writing, media and publishing efforts, and personal effects. It consists of meeting minutes, clippings, plays, creative writing, photocopied correspondence, photographs, obituary, biographical and funerary materials, poems, poetry festival materials, faculty survey, 1st draft of manuscript on Yeats’s poetry, two of Olson’s published books of poetry, and a book of Melville’s letters.

Dates

Creation: 1931-1993

Creator

Olson, Charles, 1910-1970 (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

University records - Copyright held by Wesleyan University; all other copyright is retained by the creator - In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted

Biographical / Historical

Charles Olson was born in 1910 and grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. He studied English literature at Wesleyan and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1932. He would earn his M.A. in the same subject in 1933. His thesis on Herman Melville would peak an interest, one he would continue to study at Wesleyan from 1933-1934 while on a partial fellowhsip. Olson would go on to teach at Clark Univeristy and then became a doctoral student at Havard. His first book was published in 1947 entitled 'Call Me Ishmael." A number of his other works include "Projective Verse" (1950), "The Distances" (1960), "The Maximus Poems" (1970), and "Archaeologist of Morning" (1970).

Olson passed away in 1970, shortly after completing "The Maximus Poems."