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Born near Fayetteville, Kansas, Charles Morrow Wilson (1905-1977) was a nationally known freelance author. While the majority of his many books and magazine articles were on international trade, agriculture, and medicine topics, a significant number were on Arkansas culture and politics, rural America, Central America, and Africa from a cultural, socio-economic, and historical viewpoint.
In 1929, while Wilson was a special student in economics at Oxford, he wrote magazine fiction and published a novel about the Ozarks, entitled "Acres of Sky" 1930. From 1935-1938 he wrote for various farm magazines such as Farm and Fireside.
Later he would become an analyst for the Atlas corporation, and then special assistant to Samuel Zemurray, president of United Fruit. In this position, he served as medical, research, an management coordinator for the company in Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Jamaica. The subject of his writings during the period 1939-1950 reflect his involvement with Latin American trade and economics and U.S.- Latin American relations.
Because of his work during WWII on supplies procurement, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company invited him to go to Liberia under the title of "acting assistant manager" of the rubber plantations. He remained for five years, assisting and advising the developing nations of West Africa.
In the 1960s, Wilson turned to juvenile non-fiction with biographies of Rudolf Deisel and Champlain. During this period Wilson worked as special consultant for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The collection contains professional and personal correspondence, publications and tearsheets, diaries and ledgers, manuscripts, speeches, research materials, a radio interview, and published books.
Wilson made little use of a literary agent and thus his professional correspondence is mostly between him and editors of magazines and publishing houses, and publisher's readers who evaluated Wilson's manuscripts and suggested revisions.
Outgoing professional correspondence is organized by date (1928-1974) and includes letters to publisher's readers.
Incoming professional correspondence is organized alphabetically by last name or agency title and includes letters from editors and publishers.
Incoming personal and miscellaneous correspondence is filed by last name or agency title and includes letters from United Fruit, state agencies, family and friends.
There are fifteen volumes of diaries and ledgers that span 1936-1969.
Manuscript material includes book-length, short story, fragment, article and book proposals, speeches, research material. Book-length manuscripts often include multiple drafts, revisions, research notebooks, printer's copies, and notes. Short story manuscripts occasionally include early and final drafts.
Publications are filed by title and files include correspondence, and reader's responses and fan mail to Wilson's controversial article on Governor Orval Faubus in 1959.
Magazines, reprints, and tearsheets are organized by the article title written by Wilson.
There is also a file of book reviews and press releases, and one folder of miscellaneous material that includes a radio interview with Wilson, book jackets, and photographs.