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.
Paper finding aid with additional information is available in Special Collections & University Archives.
James Rorty (1890-1973) was born March 30, 1890, in Middletown, New York, the son of Octavia (Churchill) and Richard McKay Rorty. He was educated in Middletown schools and at Tufts College, where he received his Bachelor's in 1913. He did graduate work at New York University and The New School for Social Research.
During WWI he served as a stretcher bearer on the Argonne front, earning the Distinguished Service Cross, and shortly after returning from Europe he married Maria Ward Lambin. They were divorced in 1928, and he married Winifred Raushenbush, and together they had one son, Richard.
James Rorty's career as a journalist and poet spanned over sixty years. In the introductory chapter of his unpublished memoirs, he called himself "the last of the muckrakers," but enlarged on that image in a newspaper interview where he stated that his books against individual industries were only part of his overall work of combating social injustice in America. "My work has been all one book - prose, plays, and poetry - on American economy and culture," he is quoted as saying.
Rorty also worked as an editor, journalist, advertising copy writer, and consultant for the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Series I: Correspondence is separated into outgoing and incoming sections. Outgoing correspondence is organized by date (1915-1972). Incoming correspondence is organized alphabetically by name or title. Incoming letters include fan letters and congratulatory letters regarding Rorty's poetry.
There is another section of incoming correspondence from family members.
Series II: Journals and notebooks contain literary notebooks with prose and poetry drafts and ideas, and day journals (1919-1920s; 1960s).
Series III: Manuscript material is organized by type: Book Length; Plays; Article Length; Book Reviews; Voice of America Files; Poetry; Poetry Collections; and miscellaneous chapters, fragments, and pages. Material within each section is organized alphabetically by title.
Voice of America material was written during Rorty's employment with the Ideological Advisory Unit, from 1951-1953.
Series IV: Tearsheets and Clippings contains articles about Rorty, articles written by Rorty; and possibly tearsheets and articles gathered by Rorty. Material is arranged by title of work.
Series V: Miscellaneous Items includes manuscripts by others, press clippings, reviews of Rorty's books, photographs, biographical outlines, contracts, and other financial records.
Series VI: The Papers of Eva Beard includes correspondence, manuscripts, tearsheets and clippings, household notes, copyright records, and biographical information.
Series VII: The papers of Marion Bullard includes manuscripts, original sketches, clippings, press, address books, and photographs.
The collection also includes publications by Rorty, and by others.
Photographs have been removed from their original placement in the collection, and are stored separately for preservation reasons, under the call number PH123.
The collection also includes an accession of 2005: 05.034.M which includes correspondence and literary manuscripts.