James Norman Hall Papers

Résumé du livre

These papers include letters, literary typescripts, photographs, and news clippings of World War I aviator and American author James Norman Hall. The letters are mostly written by the author to his mother Ella (Young) Hall of Colfax, Iowa and cover the time span of 1909 to 1951. The largest portion are written from Papeete, Tahiti where Hall lived with his wife and children and worked on manuscripts for Mutiny on the Bounty and other adventure books and World War I memoirs. The early letters are written during his travels to the United Kingdom while a student of Grinnell College and Harvard College, and are followed by a series of letters from his time as a reporter and aviator during World War I. The literary typescripts include pages from Kitchener's Mob, a chapter from the Lafayette Flying Corps, and copies of poems The Old Hall Door, Trench Eighty-Three: Flanders, and The Song for the Soldier. Among the still images are snapshots of Captain Hall after his plane was shot down in World War I; a photo of Hall with other American aviators held prisoner by the Germans at Landshut, Bavaria; and a series of original photos of Papeete, Tahiti (circa 1925) sent to his mother with descriptive notes on the reverse. These papers and photographs are supplemented by news clippings and magazine articles about James Norman Hall's military and literary accomplishments.