1974-1976
Manuscript Collection Number: 143
Accessioned: Purchase, September
1986
Extent: 30 items, .33 linear ft.
Content: Letters and manuscripts
Access: The collection is open for research.
Processed: 1991 by Tim Murray;
completed January 1994 by Kelly Baum
Special Collections, University of Delaware Library
Newark, Delaware 19717-5267
(302) 831-2229
Charles Johnson was born in 1948 in Evanston, Illinois. He attended Southern Illinois University at Carbondale where he received a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1971 and a master's degree in philosophy in 1973. He continued with postgraduate work at SUNY Stony Brook, delving into the issues of phenomenology and literary aesthetics. Before committing himself to a writing career, Johnson worked as a political cartoonist and photojournalist. Currently, he is Professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle and former chair of their Creative Writing Department. He has published an array of radio dramas, articles and novels, such as Faith and the Good Thing (1974), Oxherding Tales (1982), and Middle Passage (1990). (Many of these publications are cataloged in the stacks of Morris Library and in the Special Collections Department.) Johnson also wrote and produced a series for PBS and is fiction editor for the Seattle Review.
The letters and manuscripts contained in the collection comprise material sent to Johnson's friend and former professor John Gardner (1933-1982). Gardner taught creative writing at Southern Illinois University and was an author as well, publishing books, poems, and collections of essays.
Note: Some biographical information is derived from material in the collection.
Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 33, Afro-American fiction writers after 1955. Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research Co., 1984.
The Charles Johnson Papers consist of letters and manuscripts sent to Johnson's former professor, John Gardner, in the late 1970s. The letters, some decorated with sketches and caricatures, detail Johnson's nascent ideas for several unwritten novels and stories. Other letters share personal anecdotes and describe Johnson's university classes, experiences with publishers, and employment opportunities. The letters also contain dense philosophical meditations on literature, the nature of the artist and writer, and on Black experience. With many of his letters, Johnson included manuscripts of articles and novels for Gardner to peruse and critique. The collection thus provides an intimate and revealing glance into Johnson's publications, his methodology, and beliefs.
Series I of the Charles Johnson Papers contain letters sent to John Gardner from 1974 to 1976. Included in this series are the manuscripts, reviews, and articles accompanying Johnson's letters. Series II consists of the author's manuscripts, outlines, and early versions of Oxherding Tales and the radio drama "The Devil and Jubilee Tuthill."
Box -- Folder -- Contents
Series I. Letters, 1974-1976
F1 1974 Oct-1975 Apr
(15 items)
Includes five photocopied reviews of Johnson's Faith and the Good Thing and
a manuscript of Johnson's "Lyricism in the Language of Zen Buddhism" with the
author's corrections.
F2 1975 Jul-Sep (6 items)
Includes a photocopy of Johnson's essay "The Primevil Mitosis: A Phenomenology
of the Black Mind."
F3 1975 Oct-1976 Sep (8 items)
Series II. Manuscripts
F4 Outline for the radio drama "The Devil and Jubilee Tuthill."
F5 Typed manuscript for "The Devil and Jubilee Tuthill."
F6 Outline for the novel Oxherding Tales, an excerpt of The Three Pillars of Zen,
a source for Johnson's novel,and a typed manuscript of "Hoaxes."
F7 Typed manuscript of Oxherding Tales with the author's notes and corrections.
F8 Typed manuscript of a chapter from Oxherding Tales entitled "Clump."
F9 Typed manuscript of Chapter 3 from Faith and the Good Thing.
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