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Fawn McKay Brodie papers, 1932-1983

Overview of the Collection

Creator
Brodie, Fawn McKay, 1915-1981
Title
Fawn McKay Brodie papers
Dates
1932-1983 (inclusive)
Quantity
25.25 linear feet, (72 boxes)
Collection Number
MS 0360
Summary
The Fawn McKay Brodie papers (1932-1983) document the life (1915-1981) and writings of this well-known but controversial Utah-born author and university professor. Included are personal materials, including a biography, interviews, awards, an obituary, and memorial; a file regarding her husband, Bernard Brodie, and her mother, Fawn Brimhall McKay; and family correspondence. The bulk of the collection deals with Brodie's five books: No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith The Mormon Prophet (1945); Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (1959); The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton (1967); Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (1974); and Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character (1981). Of interest is extensive correspondence with noted historian Dale L. Morgan in which he comments extensively on the preparation of No Man Knows My History. Other documents reflect Brodie's tenure as professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, 1967-1977. Also present are articles, book reviews, and lectures.
Repository
University of Utah Libraries, Special Collections
Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library
University of Utah
295 South 1500 East
Salt Lake City, UT
84112-0860

Telephone: 8015818863
special@library.utah.edu
Access Restrictions

Twenty-four hour advanced notice encouraged. Materials must be used on-site. Access to parts of this collection may be restricted under provisions of state or federal law.

Some original items have been removed and placed in Reserve. Access must be given by the Manuscripts Curator and by appointment. An archivist must remain with the items if being used. Photocopies are available in the collection for research use.

Languages
English
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Historical Note

Fawn M. Brodie was born September 15, 1915, in Ogden, Utah, and raised on the family farm in Huntsville, a small town fifteen miles east of Ogden. Hers was, by her own account, an idyllic childhood. Her father, Thomas E. McKay, was a "very devout Mormon," an assistant to the Twelve Apostles, and president of the European Mission. His brother was David O. McKay, who later became president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her mother, Fawn Brimhall McKay, was in her daughter's phrase a "quiet heretic." Fawn Brodie's maternal uncle, Dean Brimhall, was widely known as a free thinker and scholar. It was from her mother's family that Fawn Brodie took her course in life.

Fawn Brodie began her education in the Weber County School District. By the time she was eighteen, she had attended both Weber State College in Ogden and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and earned a B.A. in English literature from the latter. It was at the University of Utah she began to feel "a quiet kind of liberation" from "the parochialism of the Mormon community." She later described this feeling as "like taking off a hot coat in the summertime." By the time she entered the University of Chicago for graduate work in 1936, her break with the past was almost complete. It was there, while working in the cafeteria, that she met Bernard Brodie, a young Jewish student of political science. Despite the objections of both sets of parents, they were married on August 25, 1936. She received her M.A. in English literature on the same day.

In an effort to answer Bernard's questions on the Book of Mormon, Fawn Brodie began researching her own religious background in the university library where she worked. Her research convinced her that an objective biography of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, was needed and her preliminary work on a biography led to her being awarded the Alfred A. Knopf Fellowship in Biography in 1943.

In the meantime Bernard Brodie accepted a teaching position at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. It was here their first child, Richard, was born in 1942. For a short time during World War II, Bernard worked for the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C., but in 1945 he began teaching political science at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. While at New Haven, Fawn Brodie completed work on No Man Knows my History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet. It was published in November 1945 and instantly aroused a storm of controversy that has not yet subsided. The book and its author were denounced in the highest circles of the L.D.S. Church, and even now few people who are familiar with the work are ambivalent about it. As a direct result of the book, Fawn Brodie was excommunicated from the L.D.S. Church in June of 1946.

These vicissitudes notwithstanding, the years at Yale were happy ones for the Brodies. They built a house in Bethany, a small town near New Haven, that was featured in Your House and Home magazine in 1950. It was here their other two children were born, Bruce in 1946 and Pamela in 1950. Bernard Brodie had meanwhile joined the RAND Corporation, and after less than a year in Washington, D.C., was transferred to corporate headquarters in Santa Monica, California. There the Brodies lived in a small bungalow while building their next home in Pacific Palisades. This was to be their home for the rest of their lives.

Once settled in their home, Fawn Brodie turned again to writing. Her second book, Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South, was published in 1959. In that same year, Bernard was awarded a grant by the Carnegie Foundation. The grant, a "Reflective Year Fellowship," allowed the family to spend a year in Paris. Out of this came Fawn and Bernard Brodie's first collaborative work, From Crossbow to H-Bomb.

In 1967 Fawn accepted a position as senior lecturer in history at the University of California, Los Angeles. In this same year, she finished her third book, The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton; her work as a historian and biographer now began to be recognized. She was named a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society, and other awards and honors soon followed. In 1974 her fourth book, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, was published. This book was second only to No Man Knows My History in terms of the controversy it produced. In her efforts to reveal Jefferson's "inner life," she presented detailed evidence of his long-term affair with a Black enslaved person, Sally Hemings. This roused the ire of the conservative "Jefferson establishment," which had long held such stories to be untrue.

Fawn Brodie began research on her fifth and final book, a biography of Richard Nixon, in 1976. Her husband, her publisher, and many of her friends tried to dissuade her from this project, but she persisted. This book was a radical change for her, as up to this point all of her biographies had been about men she greatly admired. Nixon, however, she "detested." About this time, Bernard Brodie was diagnosed as having cancer of the lymph system, and Fawn Brodie was increasingly concerned with her husband's health. After a period of remission, the disease prevailed and Bernard died in November of 1978. Fawn Brodie was devastated by his death and entered a state of depression from which she never fully recovered. She was reluctant to continue work on the Nixon biography--in a letter from this period she wrote that Nixon's life just seemed an "obscenity"--but it had been Bernard's final wish that she finish the book.

Soon after her sixty-fifth birthday, in September of 1980, Fawn Brodie too was found to be suffering from terminal cancer. She was just finishing the Nixon biography, and now raced against her impending death to complete the manuscript. It was finished in December of 1980; the final editing was done by her sons, Richard and Bruce, and Bruce's wife Janet. Fawn Brodie did not live to see Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character in print, for she died on January 10, 1981.

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Content Description

The Fawn McKay Brodie papers (1932-1983) document the life (1915-1981) and writings of this well-known but controversial Utah-born author and university professor.

The personal materials in the first seven boxes are divided into two broad areas: Personal Materials and Correspondence. Box 1 contains biographical materials, interviews, awards, obituaries, and memorials. Also included is a file on her husband Bernard Brodie and the notebooks of her mother Fawn Brimhall McKay. The rest of these boxes contain correspondence arranged as follows: Family Correspondence, Brimhall Family Correspondence, Personal Correspondence, Miscellaneous Correspondence, Business Correspondence, and Dale L. Morgan Correspondence, which also contains some research materials. The highlights of this section are the Brimhall family and Dale L. Morgan correspondence. The correspondence of Fawn M. Brodie's maternal grandparents and their relatives provides a glimpse into the world of the Mormons in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The correspondence of fellow scholar Dale L. Morgan, in many ways Fawn Brodie's mentor, provides insight into the mind and methods of one of America's eminent historians.

The bulk of the collection is comprised of materials dealing with each of Fawn Brodie's five books. These are No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, published in 1945; Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South, 1959; The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton, 1967; Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, 1974; and Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character, 1981. The records of the first three books are not complete. The notes and manuscript for No Man Knows My History were apparently discarded. There is, however, an extensive file of correspondence relating to the book, which Fawn Brodie arranged in the categories Non-Mormon, Mormon-Favorable, Mormon-Unfavorable, and "Crackpot." The letters are arranged alphabetically within the folders. There is also one box of miscellaneous materials on the L.D.S. Church Fawn Brodie labeled "Mormon File." For Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South, there is only a finished manuscript, some research materials, and a few book reviews. The fate of the remainder of the materials is unknown. The collection of materials on The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton is even more sketchy. The manuscript, research materials, and an extensive library of Burton's works were sold to the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. The materials on her last two books are much more complete. Both Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History and Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character contain the manuscripts, research materials, and correspondence requesting permission to use quotations and asking for interviews. The Nixon book also contains page proofs, galleys, and publisher's notes.

The next group of materials deals with Fawn Brodie's tenure as professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, from 1967 to 1977. This consists primarily of lecture notes she used teaching her classes in history and biography. Also included are two boxes of student papers with her comments, one box of recommendations written by Fawn Brodie for students, one box of business materials concerned with UCLA such as personal data sheets and forms, and one box containing a series of lectures Fawn Brodie was to give at the National Defense Academy in Japan in 1977, which she had to cancel.

The final section is labeled Articles, Book Reviews, Lectures, Miscellaneous. As a prominent scholar, Fawn Brodie often gave lectures, wrote book reviews, and submitted articles to scholarly journals, magazines, and encyclopedias. This section consists of drafts of articles and speeches, correspondence dealing with them, and miscellaneous materials relating to her lectures such as programs, posters, and notes. The final box contains books written by Fawn and Bernard Brodie and tapes of talks and interviews with Fawn Brodie.

An addendum to the collection consists of articles, correspondence, and an annotated first edition of No Man Knows My History.

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Use of the Collection

Restrictions on Use

The library does not claim to control copyright for all materials in the collection. An individual depicted in a reproduction has privacy rights as outlined in Title 45 CFR, part 46 (Protection of Human Subjects). For further information, please review the J. Willard Marriott Library's Use Agreement and Reproduction Request forms.

Preferred Citation

Collection Name, Collection Number, Box Number, Folder Number. Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah.

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Administrative Information

Arrangement

Organized in nine series: 1. Personal Material; 2. Correspondence; 3. No Man Knows My History; The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet; 4. Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South; 5. The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton; 6. Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History; 7. Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character; 8. University of California at Los Angeles; 9. Articles, Book Reviews and Lectures. Arranged alphabetically thereunder.

Separated Materials

See also the Fawn McKay Brodie photograph collection (P0026) and Fawn McKay Brodie audio-visual collection (A0026) in the Multimedia Division of Special Collections.

Acquisition Information

Boxes 1-72 were donated Fawn Brodie and her children in 1985 and 1995.

Processing Note

Processed by Marlene Lewis, Roy D. Webb in 1983.

Addendum processed by Mark Jensen in 1997.

Click here to read a statement on harmful language in library records.

Related Materials

Forms part of the Aileen H. Clyde 20th Century Women's Legacy Archive.

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Detailed Description of the Collection

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

Subject Terms

Personal Names

Corporate Names

Geographical Names

Form or Genre Terms

Finding aid prepared by Marlene Lewis and Roy D. Webb.
1983 (last modified: 2018)

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