UUS_mss020.xml Guide to the Kingdom Come Drafts 1955-1960 Drafts1955-1960. Finding aid created by Special Collections and Archives. Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant, 2007-2008 Utah State University, Merrill Cazier Library, Special Collections & Archives
Merrill-Cazier Library Utah State University 3000 Old Main Hill Logan, UT 84322-3000 Phone: 435 797-8248 Fax: 435 797-2880 Email: scweb@usu.edu
©2008 Machine-readable finding guide converted from markup derived via template in Altova XMLSpy; markup checked and completed by Todd Welch. December 5, 2008. Finding guide is in English in Latin script. Finding aid based on DACS (Describing Archives: A Content Standard, 2nd Edition) . 2009. Template information was updated to reflect Archives West best practice guidelines. Descriptive Summary Utah State University, Merrill-Cazier Library, Special Collections & Archives Manuscript Collection
Merrill-Cazier Library Utah State University 3000 Old Main Hill Logan, UT 84322-3000 Phone: 435 797-8248 Fax: 435 797-2880 Email: scweb@usu.edu
UUS_COLL MSS 020 Sorensen, Virginia Eggertsen, 1912-1991. Kingdom Come Drafts 1955-1960 2 boxes .75 linear ft. Draft for book Drafts (rough and final) and printer's proofs for book Kingdom Come, published under same title, 1960. Collection materials are in English. Restrictions

Open to public research.

 Copyright

It is the responsibility of the user to obtain permission to publish from the owner of the copyright (the institution, the creator of the record, the author or his/her transferees, heirs, legates, or literary executors). The user agrees to indemnify and hold harmless the Utah State University Libraries, its officers, employees, and agents from and against all claims made by any person asserting that he or she is an owner of copyright.

Permission to publish material from the Drafts must be obtained from the Special Collections Manuscript Curator and/or the Special Collections Department Head.

The materials in this collection were donated to Utah State University Special Collections & Archives by Virginia Sorensen in the early 1960s.

Drafts, 1955-1960 (COLL MSS 20). Utah State University. Special Collections and Archives Department.

 Biographical Note

Virginia Sorensen was born Virginia Eggertsen in Provo, Utah, in 1912 and spent her formative years from age five to thirteen in Manti, Utah. She graduated from American Fork High School, and later from Brigham Young University (1934), and she also studied at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and at Stanford University. She married Frederick Sorensen and lived in Terre Haute, Indiana, in Denver, Colorado, in Auburn, Alabama, and in Edinboro, Pennsylvania. After the dissolution of her marriage to Sorensen, she married the English writer Alec Waugh and lived with him in Morocco from 1967 to 1980, when she returned to the United States.

Sorensen's fiction writing reflects what she termed "the real dilemma of the novelist in our time and place . . . to somehow balance the importance of the individual . . . with the importance of the great events that wash people into vast groups and crowds, into anonymous armies." Her critically well received first novel, A Little Lower than the Angels (1942), deals with the beginnings of polygamy in Mormon Nauvoo. On This Star (1946), The Evening and the Morning (1949), Many Heavens (1954), and Where Nothing Is Long Ago (1963) all focus on conflicts between independent-minded individuals and Mormon small-town society.

Sorensen was twice awarded Guggenheim fellowships. The first resulted in The Proper Gods (1951), which follows the efforts of a Yaqui Indian to recover his ancestral traditions. A second Guggenheim supported research in Denmark that enabled Sorensen to write Kingdom Come (1960), an imaginative recreation of the lives of Danish converts to Mormonism during the 1850s. Her other novels are The Neighbors (1947) and The Man With the Key (1974).

Sorensen also published seven books for children, beginning with Curious Missy (1953), which grew out of her efforts to establish a bookmobile program in Alabama. Child Study Award-winning Plain Girl (1955) explores the conflict between the individual and the community among the Amish of Pennsylvania. Miracles on Maple Hill (1957), which won the John Newbery Medal of the American Library Association, is also set in Pennsylvania. Virginia Sorensen died on 24 December 1991.

Source:

Capsule biography, written by Edward A. Geary, from the Utah History Encyclopedia

Additional sources:

Lee, L. L. and S. B., "Virginia Sorensen," Western Writers Series, No. 31, Boise State University, Idaho, 1978. (USU Special Collections & Archives, call number 979.092 W524w no. 31)

Mary Lythgoe Bradford, "Virginia Sorensen: An Introduction," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 13, 1980.

This two-box collection contains drafts of Virginia Sorensen's Kingdom Come. box 1 contains the printer's proof of Kingdom Come box 2 contains a rough draft and draft of Kingdom Come

Sorensen, Virginia E., Kingdom Come, Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1960 (USU Special Collections & Archives, call number: 289.38 So68k).

Numerical by page number.

 Literature Sorensen, Virginia Eggertsen, 1912- Kingdom Come. Container List Printer's proof of Kingdom Come. undated 1 1 Printer's proof of Kingdom Come. undated Draft and Rough Draft of Kingdom Come undated 2 1 Draft of Kingdom Come, pp. 1-177a undated 2 2 Draft of Kingdom Come, pp. 177b-377 undated 2 3 Draft of Kingdom Come, pp. 378-553 undated 2 4 Draft of Kingdom Come, pp. 554-634 undated 2 5 Rough draft of Kingdom Come, pp. 1-93 undated 2 6 Rough draft of Kingdom Come, pp. 94-216 undated 2 7 Rough draft of Kingdom Come, pp. 217-308 undated 2 8 Rough draft of Kingdom Come, pp. 309-439 undated 2 9 Rough draft of Kingdom Come, pp. 440-563 undated