Jessy Randall
Thinking about this blog and the connections between libraries and mysteries, I suddenly remembered last night that one of my very earliest rare book experiences concerned mysteries. I was a student assistant at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library of Columbia University, and one of the first things I had to do in that illustrious position was ... a lot of photocopying. Like, hundreds and hundreds of pages of photocopying. It was 1990, and that's how we helped remote researchers back then.
I spent many hours copying Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine manuscript materials for a researcher whose name I never knew. I see now that I must have been in the Frederic Dannay Papers, which are pretty impressive. There's a note in the finding aid stating "This part of the collection comprises 87 boxes of manuscripts submitted to EQMM from its beginning in 1941 till the early 1980s." Elsewhere, the number of manuscripts in the collection is given as 4,600. Now, I'm not saying I copied all 4,600 manuscripts (thought it may have felt like that at the time) -- but -- WHOA.
So that means that Dannay, co-founder (with his cousin Mandred B. Lee) of EQMM and editor of the magazine for four decades, saved the manuscript versions of virtually all the stories published in the magazine. That's pretty amazing. So this collection includes manuscripts of stories by -- well -- EVERYONE. Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Pearl S. Buck, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey, and many more.
I guess he knew what he was doing, huh?
I visited the Columbia U. Rare Book Room a few years ago and saw the early EQMM collection in a special display. Inspired me to send in one of my stories (a Sign from God, you know). It felt great to be in the company of those many authors over the years. Just posting on my website about three current (well, two current and one from a year ago--how did that happen?!)issues. http://www.vweisfeld.com/?p=2546
Posted by: Vicki Weisfeld | September 25, 2014 at 07:43 AM