Archives West Finding Aid

This addendum to the David Lane Wright collection (Mss Coll 2), contains further writings, correspondence, and journals, as well as some Air Force material from the Idaho writer. The collection has been organized along the same lines as the original collection with boxes devoted to correspondence, his writing, his career in the Air Force, and his journals.

boxes 1 through 7 contain incoming correspondence from family, friends, and publishers organized chronologically. A few folders organized by date but containing correspondence from specific people or institutions were retained since Wright had organized these himself. The last part of box 7 and all of box 8 contain more correspondence, incoming or outgoing as noted, which Wright organized into specific collections (such as correspondence with his friends Vosco Call and Jim Miller, as well some people he knew in Vietnam), or which had no date. Since Wright generally kept copies of his own letters, boxes 9 and 10 contain outgoing mail organized chronologically. A great portion of this correspondence, particularly that from 1955 and 1956, contain information on Amos Wright, David Wright's great-grandfather, who figured prominently in Idaho and early-Mormon history and about whom Wright was writing a biography.

boxes 11 through 19 contain publications and drafts of Wright's work. box 11 is specifically devoted to published versions of his writings in journals and pamphlet form. boxes 12 through 15 contain drafts, notes, and compilations of short stories as well as some miscellaneous composition books and free writing. While the attempt has been to organize the writing to make research easier, for the most part the content of the folders reflects how Wright organized them. Thus, some folders which contain untitled manuscripts or miscellaneous writing are as Wright organized them in order to preserve what order he ascribed them. box 16 contains poetry, poetry compilations, and essays, while boxes 17 through 19 are devoted to Scripts and Novels, containing notes and drafts of both. box 20 contains miscellany such as newspaper clippings, photographs, and programs, including those from the original production of "Still the Mountain Wind."

box 21 has items from college, primarily the University of Iowa, and box 22 is devoted to Wright's Air Force career and contains photographs, manuals, notes, and official records. The rest of the collection, boxes 23 through 27 contain Wright's numerous and detail journals as well as three audio recordings. There is some overlap in the journals as Wright apparently would start one before he had filled up another and then later would return and finish the others. He frequently used notebook paper and letters to fill in for days when he did have his journal with him. Finally, because this is an addendum to the Mss Coll 2 with which it frequently overlaps, numerous cross references have been added to aid the researcher in locating all relevant material.

Overall the collection documents and life and work of a voluminous writer who only began to receive national recognition for his work shortly before his death. That much of his writing is still relevant is evidenced by posthumously published poetry and continuing performances of his best known work, "Still the Mountain Wind," performed as recently as 1995, nearly thirty years over his death. Wright's work documents life in a small, Mormon community in Southern Idaho, in addition to his research into the life of Amos Wright. This collection has value, not just for the literary works, but also for how it documents life and relations in southern Idaho.