Collection is open to the public. Collection must be used in Special Collections and University Archives Reading Room. Collection or parts of collection may be stored offsite. Please contact Special Collections and University Archives in advance of your visit to allow for transportation time.
Edwin Booth, who also wrote under the names Don Blunt and Jack Hazard, was born in 1906 in Beatrice, Nebraska. He attended public schools in Nebraska and Iowa before moving to Colorado, where he studied civil engineering at Colorado College. During summer vacations Booth drove a milk truck, worked as a postal clerk, and guided tourists through Colorado's Cave of the Winds. In New Mexico, he worked as a ranch hand. After moving to California, Booth worked in a chain grocery store while studying accounting. He later started his own accounting firm which supported him until he became established as an author of westerns and mystery stories. In the 1960s, Edwin Booth was an officer in Western Writers of America, an organization of writers dedicated to the advancement and promotion of literature about the American West.
The collection includes correspondence concerning Booth's work as a writer, including letters to and from Bill Cox, Noel Loomis, Merle Costiner, and Thomas Thompson, all of whom were writers of westerns.
The collection also includes 56 book length manuscripts, most with first, second and final drafts; 121 story length manuscripts, most with early and final drafts; some unidentified manuscript fragments; and one folder of reference material.