Preferred Citation:	Christopher Morley Collection (Manuscript Collection MS-02921). Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
	Acquisition:	Purchases and gifts, 1960-2020 (unnumbered purchases, 1960 (3); unnumbered purchase, 1961; unnumbered purchase, 1965; unnumbered purchase, 1967; R3788; R2804-2806; R4187; R4498; Gift 1969; unnumbered purchase, 1969; R5436; Gift 1971; Gift 1973; Gift, 1975; Gift 1976; R7748; unnumbered purchase, 1978; G2405; G10593; G11718; 18-02-012-G; 20-10-002-G).
	Processed by:	Joan Sibley, 2025. Note:: For collection description previously available only in a card catalog, please see the explanatory note for information regarding the arrangement of the manuscripts as well as the abbreviations commonly used in descriptions

Repository:

Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

	Christopher Darlington Morley was born in Haverford, Pennsylvania on May 5, 1890, to Frank Morley (1860-1937), an English mathematician who immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1887, and Lilian Janet Bird Morley (1866-1939). "Kit," as Christopher was called, had two younger brothers, Felix Muskett Morley (1894-1982) and Frank Vigor Morley (1899-1980).
	Christopher attended Haverford College, graduating in 1910, and studied at New College, Oxford, from 1910 to 1913 as a Rhodes Scholar. In 1914, he married Helen Booth Fairchild (1893-1966), an American he met while at Oxford. The couple moved to New York City first, then Philadelphia, and finally to Roslyn Estates on Long Island in 1920, where Morley lived until his death in 1957. Their four children were Christopher Darlington Morley, Jr. (1916-2011); Louise Booth Morley Cochrane (1918-2012); Helen Fairchild Morley Woodruff (1920-2012); and Blythe Morley Brennan (1923-2002).
	Morley started his career in 1913 at Doubleday, Page & Co. as a publicist and publisher’s reader, then became an editor at Ladies Home Journal (1917-1918), a reporter and columnist for the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger (1918-1920), and a journalist and columnist at the New York Evening Post (1920-1923). He was also one of the founders and a longtime contributing editor of the Saturday Review of Literature (1924-1941) and was a long-serving member of the Book-of-the-Month Club editorial board (1926-1955).
	He also organized and participated in various clubs, establishing his Three Hours for Lunch Club in 1920, and was also one of the regulars who frequented Frank Shay’s Greenwich Village Bookshop (1920-1925). Morley even ventured into the theatre as playwright, producer (with theatre designer Cleon Throckmorton), and actor at their Hoboken Theatrical Company (1928-1930). Although the origins of the still-extant Baker Street Irregulars date to Morley’s childhood, he inspired and helped bring this Sherlock Holmes literary society into existence in 1934.
	Morley is best known today for his first two novels, Parnassus on Wheels (1917) and a sequel, The Haunted Bookshop (1919), which have never been out of print. In addition to his work as a columnist, editor, and book reviewer, Morley continuously wrote and published novels, essays, poems, and plays resulting in over 70 books over his lifetime. Other well-known works include Thunder on the Left (1925) and the best-seller Kitty Foyle (1939), in which Morley spoke up for "the white-collar girls," who seemed to him as worthy of attention as Steinbeck’s poor farmers in The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Unusual in its time for its open discussion of abortion, Kitty Foyle was also made into an Academy Award-winning movie (1940). Morley also frequently wrote about and promoted other authors, including such personal favorites as Joseph Conrad, William Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Walt Whitman.
	Morley’s remarkable productivity was curtailed by a series of strokes in 1951. His final book, Gentleman’s Relish (1955), marked his eighteenth volume of poems published since The Eighth Sin (1912). Morley died at his home in Roslyn on March 28, 1957. The memorial Christopher Morley Park in North Hills, New York is now home to "The Knothole," the writing cabin that Morley built in 1934.

	During his long and varied career, American author Christopher Morley wrote over 70 books; edited newspapers and magazines; was active in the theater as playwright, producer, and actor; and served on the editorial board of the Book-of-the-Month Club for 28 years. The collection contains manuscripts for practically all of Morley’s writings, his voluminous correspondence, and personal and family papers.
	This collection was previously accessible only through a card catalog but has now been re-cataloged as part of a retrospective conversion project. For collection description previously available only in a card catalog, please see the explanatory note for information regarding the arrangement of the manuscripts as well as the abbreviations commonly used in descriptions. The material remains as originally organized into four series: I. Works, 1896-1955 (boxes 1-40); II. Letters (Outgoing Correspondence), 1895-1956 (boxes 40-55); III. Recipients (Incoming Correspondence), 1896-1957 (boxes 55-111); and IV. Miscellaneous, 1787-1996 (boxes 111-164), with materials arranged alphabetically by title or author. See the Indexes for Works, Letters, Recipients, and Miscellaneous in this finding aid to further identify titles of works and correspondent names present in this collection. Additional materials not cataloged in the card catalog include Transfers from the HRC Library, 1887-1956 (boxes 165-166) and Later Acquisitions, 1996-2020 (box 166).
	Series I. Works, 1896-1955 (boxes 1-40). In addition to Morley’s dominant writing genres -- essays, poems, novels, and plays -- the works by Morley present in this series also include manuscripts representing addresses and lectures; articles; autobiography; book reviews; columns; diaries and journals; introductions and prefaces; juvenilia; notebooks; short stories; stories for children; and translations.
	Morley’s earliest work in this series is "The adventures of a cat" composed at age six (1896) along with other juvenila dating to 1904; the latest works are his final poems published in Gentleman’s Relish (1955). Notable are the manuscripts for Human Being (1933); the autobiographical John Mistletoe; Kitty Foyle original manuscript (1939); The Man Who Made Friends with Himself (1949), which Morley considered his most important novel; Pandora Lifts the Lid (co-written with his close friend Don Marquis, 1924); the first draft of Thorofare (1942); The Trojan Horse (in both novel and play versions, 1937, 1941); and Where the Blue Begins (in multiple play versions, 1925).
	Some of Morley’s works are present in multiple forms, such as novels adapted into plays for the theater or into scripts for radio or motion pictures. Some works (mostly plays) in this collection were adapted by Morley from works by other authors, including Charles M. Barras, Dion Boucicault, John Brougham, C. S. Lewis, William Shakespeare, and Edward Stirling. Works that Morley co-authored with other writers are also present, namely Earl Derr Biggers, E. S. Colling, John V. L. Hogan, Don Marquis, Felix Riesenberg, and Cleon Throckmorton.
	The Works I - III at the end of this series are three notebooks containing early handwritten versions of poems, which are often supplemented by later typed versions that are filed alphabetically by title throughout the Works series. See the Index of Works in this finding aid to locate individual titles of Morley works available.
	Morley often used pseudonyms and at least 13 are represented for works in this collection, with Barclay Hall, Dove Dulcet, John Mistletoe, and The Old Mandarin used most frequently. The popular poems of The Old Mandarin are “pseudotranslations,” not poems translated from the Chinese, but poems written by Morley in the persona of The Old Mandarin. See the Index of Works for a complete list of the pseudonyms present in this collection.
	Information in the journals and diaries in this series can be supplemented by reading the frequent letters that Morley wrote to his parents. Many works, especially early ones contributed to periodicals, can be verified by examining Morley’s scrapbooks in the Vertical File Collection. These contain clippings, many annotated by Morley, and also anonymous and pseudonymous pieces.
	Correspondence is contained in Series II. Letters (Outgoing Correspondence), 1895-1956 (boxes 40-55) and Series III. Recipients (Incoming Correspondence), 1896-1957 (boxes 55-111). Morley’s many correspondents are dominated by other authors and editors, co-authors and adapters of Morley works, colleagues, family members (parents, brothers, wife, children, and others) and publishers and publications, but also include bibliographers, book collectors, booksellers, club members (especially the Baker Street Irregulars), educators, fans, friends and neighbors, illustrators, sailing enthusiasts, and former schoolmates.
	Among correspondents well represented in Morley’s correspondence are Ben Abramson, Edward Page Allinson (a life-long friend), William Rose Benét, Sir David William Bone, James Bone, Tom Daly, Walter de la Mare, Bernard De Voto, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Buckminster Fuller, Louis Greenfield, Robert Cortes Holliday, Mitchell Kennerley, Julius J. Lankes, Vachel Lindsay,William McFee, Don Marquis, C. E. Montague, Marianne Moore, Alfred E. Newton, Richard Pryce (British playwright), John Crowe Ransom, Felix Riesenberg, Robert Critchell Rimington, A. S. W. Rosenbach, Vincent Starrett, Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, Howard Swiggett, Cleon Throckmorton (best known as a set designer), H. M. Tomlinson, James Whittall, William Lloyd Garrison Williams, Elizabeth Winspear (Morley’s secretary), and Sir Francis James Wylie.
	Many organizations, publications, and publishers are represented in Christopher Morley’s correspondence, including Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Atlantic Monthly, the Baker Street Irregulars (Elmer Davis, William Stanley Hall, James Keddie, Jr., Robert Keith Leavitt, Harvey Officer, Edgar Wadsworth Smith), the Book-of-the-Month Club (Basil Davenport, Amy Loveman, Harry Scherman, Meredith Wood), Doubleday & Co. (Ken McCormick, Louise Thomas), Doubleday, Page & Co. (Arthur W. Page), Dramatic Publishing Co., Faber and Faber Ltd., Harcourt, Brace and Co., Harper & Brothers, Haverford College, Haverford College Library, J. B. Lippincott & Co., Little, Brown & Co., Longmans, Green & Co., MacMillan Company, The New Yorker, Random House, Saturday Review (Harrison Smith), and Simon & Schuster, Inc.
	The close relatives in the Morley family are best represented, although letters to and from many extended family members are also found here. Most substantial among the family correspondents are the letters to and from parents Frank Morley and Lilian Janet Bird Morley; brothers Felix Muskett Morley and Frank Vigor Morley; wife Helen Booth Fairchild Morley; and children Christopher Darlington Morley, Jr., Louise Booth Morley Cochrane, Helen Fairchild Morley Woodruff, and Blythe Morley Brennan.
	See the Index of Letters (Outgoing Correspondence) and the Index of Recipients (Incoming Correspondence) in this finding aid to locate additional names of Morley correspondents represented in this collection.
	Series IV. Miscellaneous, 1787-1996 (boxes 111-164). The Miscellaneous series is comprised of third-party works and correspondence (i.e., not written by or to Morley), plus some Morley personal and career-related papers. Most materials are filed alphabetically by creator.
	Morley’s own segment of personal and career papers in this series (boxes 128-141, 162) includes items from his childhood and school papers from both Haverford College and the University of Oxford, such as exams, grades, notes, and scrapbooks. Financial items include bills, checkbooks, receipts, reports, royalties, and tax materials. (Note: some other financial reports from publishers are instead filed alphabetically under the publisher’s name throughout this series.) Legal documents here are mainly agreements and contracts for specific works or publishers; there is also a last will and testament from 1954. Some materials in this grouping do relate to Morley’s own works, such as advertisements, forepages, proposals, lists of contents, indexes, programs, publisher’s dummies, reviews, etc.
	Most notable among the works by other authors in the Miscellaneous series is a manuscript entitled "A Wild Plaint," first identified in 2017 as the work of American Black poet Fenton Johnson (1888-1958), considered a forerunner of the Harlem Renaissance. The manuscript was submitted under the pseudonym of Aubrey Gray to Doubleday, Page & Co. in 1909. Morley’s work as an editor at Doubleday, Page, likely accounts for the manuscript’s presence in his collection.
	Other authors represented by writings in this series are Charles M. Barras (The Black Crook), Hilaire Belloc, Stephen Vincent Benét, William Rose Benét, Gavin David Bone, James Bone, Henry Seidel Canby, Walter de la Mare, Buckminster Fuller, Harry Wagstaff Gribble, William Stanley Hall, Vachel Lindsay, William McFee (Aliens, 1919), Don Marquis, John Crowe Ransom (Chills and Fevers, 1922), Felix Riesenberg, Thomas John Skeyhill (Lust’s Dominion, Moon Madness, Soldiers of the Dark), Logan Pearsall Smith, Vincent Starrett, Henry Major Tomlinson, Louis Untermeyer (From Another World, 1935), Hendrik Willem Van Loon (The Arts) and Wendell Willkie (One World, 1943). Additionally, there are adaptations of works by Morley or others, including Jean Ferguson Black (Thunder on the Left), Dion Boucicault (After Dark, revised and adapted by Christopher Morley), daughter Louise Booth Morley Cochrane (Thunder on the Left), Frank Daugherty (Parnassus on Wheels), and Richard Pryce (Thunder on the Left).
	Among the correspondents in the series are Sir Max Beerbohm, William Rose Benét, Sir David William Bone, James Bone, Walter de la Mare, Doubleday & Company, Inc./Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., Faber and Faber, Ltd., Buckminster Fuller, William Stanley Hall, J. B. Lippincott Company, Guy R. Lyle, William McFee, Don Marquis, André Maurois, Felix Riesenberg, H. M. Tomlinson, Sir Hugh Walpole, and Elizabeth Winspear. There are also numerous letters written to the publisher Frederic Chapman (1832-1895) and/or Chapman & Hall, including letters from P. T. Barnum, George Meredith, Ouida, Olive Schreiver, and possibly Anthony Trollope, among others. Morley’s maternal grandfather, James Bird, who worked at Chapman & Hall, is the probable source of these letters.
	There is also extensive correspondence for members of the Morley and allied families (Bird, Booth, Clay, Fairchild, Muskett, Vigor, etc.), but especially for Morley’s immediate family: Blythe Morley Brennan, Louise Booth Morley Cochrane, Christopher Morley, Jr., Felix Muskett Morley, Frank Morley, Frank Vigor Morley, Helen Fairchild Morley, and Lilian Bird Morley. Childhood drawings and/or writings are often present for Morley’s brothers and children. Morley’s mother Lilian’s papers are particularly rich with autobiographical reminiscences, her own works, including diaries and travel descriptions, scrapbooks, mementoes, and sympathy letters on the death of her husband, Frank. Morley’s father Frank Morley, a notable mathematician who joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in 1900, is also represented by substantial material, including correspondence to and from fellow mathematicians, Johns Hopkins faculty members, and other colleagues, with over 80 letters from the British physicist Charles Chree (1860-1928) alone.
	The Miscellaneous series also contains works, correspondence, and other papers related to various Morley activities and enthusiasms, such as the Baker Street Irregulars; the Book-of-the-Month Club; the Hoboken Theatrical Company; and sailing ships:
	• Baker Street Irregulars: Correspondence, drawings, manuscripts, membership lists, and music. In addition to Christopher Morley, individual creators of works and correspondence here include William Stanley Hall, Pope Russell Hill, Harvey Officer, Svend Petersen, and Edgar Wadsworth Smith.
	• The Book-of-the-Month Club: Correspondence, financial reports, a few manuscripts under consideration, and reader’s reports. Related correspondents are Helen Hare Caroll Cain, John Erskine, Harper & Brothers, Alfred A. Knopf, Amy Loveman, Felix Morley, Frank Morley, Random House, Harry Scherman, William Allen White, and Meredith Wood. Especially notable in the Harper & Brothers correspondence to Meredith Wood of the BOMC is a letter suggesting changes to Richard Wright’s Black Boy in 1945.
	• Hoboken Theatrical Company: Papers for Morley’s theatre venture include agreements and other legal documents, correspondence, financial reports, lists of plays, manuscript notes, press releases, and publicity programs. In addition to Christopher Morley and Cleon Throckmorton, the letterhead for the company identifies Conrad Milliken and Harry Wagstaff Gribble as other associates of the company.
	• Sailing ships: In 1923, Morley was part of a group that purchased a full-rigged merchant sailing ship originally known as the Inveruglas and renamed Tusitala to honor Robert Louis Stevenson by his Samoan name. Present in this series is a 1925 ship’s log for the Tusitala, along with two other ship’s logs, for the A. S. Sunlite and the Robert Fulton. Related correspondence by William McFee, William Stanley Hall, and Felix Riesenberg is present, along with some correspondence about Joseph Conrad’s ship, Otago.
	See the Index of Miscellaneous in this finding aid for detailed descriptions from the card catalog for the third-party works and correspondence in this segment of the Morley Collection.
	Transfers from the HRC Library, 1887-1956 (boxes 165-166.) The transfers are made up of a small group of non-print items withdrawn from the Morley Library or from individual Morley books, including some letters, manuscripts by Horace Howard Furness and Harry Wagstaff Gribble, and drawings, as well as a Christopher Morley guest book, circa 1915-1925.
	The largest group among the transfers are illustrated calligraphic manuscripts, 1931-1956, created by R. J. Bucholz, a calligrapher and printer in Cleveland, Ohio. Among the items are 19 small-format books, often with texts by some of Morley’s favorite authors (Hilaire Belloc, George Gissing, Logan Pearsall Smith, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others); two bookmarks; 15 greeting cards for birthdays and holidays; and three designs, possibly for The Saturday Review.
	Later Acquisitions, 1923-1968 (box 166). Six additions to the Morley Collection were acquired between 1975 and 2020 and include: correspondence between Morley and H. Tatnall Brown and Guy R. Lyle, 1948-1955, 1968; correspondence between Elizabeth B. Winspear and Morley, 1943 with related items; a telegram from Ogden Nash to Morley, 1949; a Bureau of Literary Control form created under Morley’s P. E. G. Quercus pseudonym, undated; a photograph by Edwin Levick of Morley on board the Tusitala, 1923; and letters from Morley to Maureen Isensee, 1943-1953.

	At the Harry Ransom Center (Austin, Texas):
	•Christopher Morley Book-of-the-Month Club Materials, 1925-1955 (44 boxes);
	• John Morley Collection, 1806-1894; 1969 (6 boxes);
	• Jon Bracker Collection of Christopher Morley Research Materials, 1959-1966 (12 boxes);
	• Louise Morley Cochrane Collection, 1997, 2006 (2 folders). Two typescripts for an article and a book written by Morley’s eldest daughter Louise (1918-2012) about the friendship between Buckminster Fuller and her father. The book was published as The Sense of Significance in 2015.
	At the Bryant Library (Roslyn, New York):
	• Christopher Morley portal
	At Haverford College (Haverford, Pennsylvania):
	• Christopher Morley collection, 1913-1943 (HC.MS-810)
	• Christopher Morley scrapbooks, 1920-1923 (HC.MC-975-04-011)
	• Morley-Cain papers, 1935-1957 (HC.MC-809)
	• Morley Family papers, 1852-1998 (HC.MC-807)
	At Stony Brook University (Stony Brook, New York):
	• Christopher Morley collection, 1914-1978 (SC 323)

	Additional Christopher Morley holdings at the Harry Ransom Center include:
	•Art: This collection of artworks by and related to Morley contains childhood drawings of a trip to England, portraits, landscapes, costume sketches, illustrations, figure drawings, two Japanese prints by Kunisada, and more. There are a number of works in the collection by various artists that Morley collected. A list of the collection (248 items) is available from the Ransom Center See also the Portrait Busts Collection for a bronze sculpture of Morley by Jo Davidson.
	•Books: Search the University of Texas Libraries Catalog at Books & Media / Advanced Search using Search filter (Provenance) and Search term (Morley, Christopher, 1890-1957, former owner) to locate records for books from Christopher Morley’s library (more than 6,000 titles/10,000 volumes).
	•Objects: 14 items, including an Adelphi College honorary degree; a framed trial proof for An apology for Boccaccio (1923); a briefcase; a Charles Dickens medallion; a commemorative scarf; the Greenwich Village Bookshop autographed door; a Joseph Conrad mold/medallion; Kern’s plasticine pig, plus associated signs/labels; a lock of Morley’s hair; a Motion Picture Relief Fund testimonial certificate; a notebook; personal bookplates; and a piece of line from Joseph Conrad's boat, Otago. See also The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia 1920-1925 online exhibition for more information about the door and detailed information on the circle of more than 200 "Bohemians" who signed the door.
	•Photographs: 2,025 items in 19 boxes, 10 albums. The Christopher Morley Literary File Collection includes images of Morley and various other people: Morley’s wife Helen Booth Fairchild, his brothers Frank and Felix, his parents, his children, and members of his extended family are represented in the file, as well as friends, associates, and other authors, including William Rose Benét, James Branch Cabell, Joseph Conrad, Frank Doubleday, R. Buckminster Fuller, Blanche Knopf, Vachel Lindsay, William McFee, Thomas Mann, Don Marquis, Ezra Pound, H. M. Tomlinson, and Walt Whitman. In addition to portraits, there are views of places associated with Morley, including Haverford, Pennsylvania, where he was born, and his residence in Roslyn, Long Island, as well as scenes from his travels around the world. The file also includes images of ships, animals, and other subjects.
	•Vertical File: 35 boxes, 35 scrapbooks, 2 oversize folders. Boxes of clippings, programs, and other printed ephemera withdrawn from Morley’s books and papers document his writings as well as his career and personal life, along with scrapbooks, 23 of which document his column “The Bowling Green,” 1920-1923. A folder-level list is accessible in the Vertical File database available onsite at the Ransom Center.

	People
		Allinson, E. Page (Edward Page), 1887-1967.
		Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924.
		Fisher, Dorothy Canfield, 1879-1958.
		Fuller, R. Buckminster (Richard Buckminster), 1895-1983.
		Hall, W. S. (William Stanley), 1889- .
		Holmes, Sherlock.
		Johnson, Fenton, 1888-1958. Wild plaint.
		Marquis, Don, 1878-1937.
		McCormick, Ken, 1906-1997.
		McFee, William, 1881-1966.
		Morley family.
		Morley, Felix M. (Felix Muskett), 1894-1982.
		Morley, F. V. (Frank Vigor), 1899-1980.
		Morley, Frank, 1860-1937.
		Morley, Lilian Janet Bird, approximately 1866-1939.
		Riesenberg, Felix, 1879-1939.
		Starrett, Vincent, 1886-1974.
		Throckmorton, Cleon, 1897-1965.
		Winspear, Elizabeth B.
		Wright, Richard, 1908-1960. Black boy.
	Organizations
		Baker Street Irregulars.
		Book-of-the-Month Club.
		Doubleday & Company, Inc.
		Greenwich Village Bookshop (New York City, New York).
		Haverford College.
		Hoboken Theatrical Company.
		Saturday review (New York, N.Y. : 1952).
		Saturday review of literature.
		University of Oxford.
	Subjects
		African-American studies.
		American literature -- 20th century.
		Authors, American -- 20th century.
		Essayists.
		Novelists.
		Performing Arts.
		Playwrights.
		Poets.
		Publishers and publishing.
		Sailing ships.
	Document Types
		Correspondence
		Juvenilia
		Manuscripts
		Printed materials