Browse Items (151 total)

Newspaper clippings related to Charles Merrill's and Hellen Ingram Merrill's divorce. The "broken home" had a profound effect on James Merrill remembering his childhood as a lonely one.

James Merrill's National Book Award for Mirabell: Books of Number. It was Merrill's second National Book Award win in 12 years. Merrill gave the prize money to Hubbell Pierce, inventor of the bat wallpaper at 107 Water Street where many…

National Book Award Acceptance Speech for Merrill's first NBA, for Nights and Days. There was a sideshow at that year's ceremony, with a large group in the audience walking out in protest of the Vietnam war when Hubert Humphrey spoke.

Mona Van Duyn letter to James Merrill in which Van Duyn requests on behalf of Washington University Libraries to start collecting Merrill's literary papers at Washington University. Van Duyn’s personal inquiry persuaded Merrill to accept the…

Mona Van Duyn: fellow prize-winning poet, early champion and good friend of James Merrill, she successfully solicited Merrill's literary papers for Washington University. In this photo she is standing in front of a painting of herself.

Maya Deren in a still from her film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). A Ukrainian immigrant, scholar of French Symbolism, progressive activist, avant-garde filmmaker and dancer, "Deren introduced Merrill to spirit possession not as a metaphor, but as a…

Maria Mitsotaki and James Merrill. Merrill's face is bound as a result of Bell's Palsy, an episode recounted in "The Thousand and Second Night" (see also the manuscript pages for that poem).

"[Maria] was pert, pretty, small and sweet...and able…

During the March 8, 1986 séance James Merrill gets relationship advice from Ephraim concerning Peter Hooten, with mention of the fight that led to Merrill pushing Hooten into the pool.

During the March 29 and April 26, 1976 séances, higher powers (over Ephraim) began revealing the cosmology that Merrill would document in Mirabell: Books of Number and Scripts for the Pageant. It was during this time period, after finishing…

Leila "Zelly" Howard, James Merrill's beloved governess, with whom he remained close until her death in 1977.