USC DML Rare Books and Manuscripts

Rare Books & Manuscripts oversees rare books, manuscripts, and historic photographs for the University of Southern California. In addition to its book holdings, Rare Books & Manuscripts maintains approximately two hundred collections of manuscripts, correspondence, archives, and artifacts. Among the collections related specifically to Los Angeles are the following: • Coulter’s Dry Goods: the Coulter family founded this business in down-town Los Angeles in 1878 and it flourished until the 1960s; included in the collection are a family history of B.F. Coulter, family photographs, photographs of window and counter displays, business correspondence, and news-paper clippings • Charles Leland Bagley: directories, minutes, bylaws, and correspondence that reflect the activities of band and orchestra musician, lawyer (graduate of the University of Southern California Law School, 1910–1911), and labor organizer Charles Leland Bagley (1873–1965); also in the collection are copies of the union publication Overture, which printed Bagley’s history of musical life in Los Angeles during the early decades of the twentieth century • Agua Caliente Indians (Judge Hilton McCabe): historical and legal files dating to the 1950s and 1960s that deal with the territorial claims of the Agua Caliente Indians near Palm Springs, as well as typescripts for and a copy of Golden Checkerboard, the book dealing with this subject that journalist Ed Ainsworth published in 1965 • The Scribes: rosters, minutes, bylaws, and members’ correspondence for the period 1926 to 1955 from the exclusive newspapermen’s club, which was founded in 1897 in Los Angeles • George H. Stewart: scrapbook of invitations, tickets, souvenir menus, acknowledgments, and newspaper clippings which was compiled between 1891 and 1910 by banker George H. Stewart, who was active in the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and its president in 1908 and 1909 • Library of Aeronautical History: memoirs; training manuals; photographs of aircraft, airfields, and maintenance facilities; advertising brochures; and ephemera relating to early commercial aviation in the United States, with an emphasis on Southern California, the first airmail and cargo carriers, and the Western Air Express company (founded in 1926; later Western Air Lines) • Women’s International Association of Aeronautics (WIAA): biographies of early female aviators; correspondence; photographs; memorabilia; scrapbooks; instructional materials; copies of the WIAA publication Aerogram; and the personal archives of Elizabeth L. McQueen (Mrs. Ulysses Grant McQueen, d. 1958), founder of the WIAA and the Women’s Aeronautic Association of California, and organizer of the so-called Powder Puff Derby (Women’s Air Derby) • Poets Garden: publications, letters, diaries, and memorabilia of the women’s literary group surrounding Los Angeles poet Ruth Le Prade (1895–1969), along with material relating to West Coast poet Edwin Markham (1852–1940) • Los Angeles Corral of the Westerners: business files, correspondence, and publications archive for the period 1950 to the present from the Los Angeles chapter of the Westerners, a national organization devoted to the history of the Old West • Lawrence Lipton: during the 1950s, Lawrence Lipton (1890–1975) was instrumental in the creation of Venice West as the center of the Los Angeles beat movement; in the collection are business files, tax records, correspondence, typescripts, photographs, newspaper clippings, and literary journals; audiotaped interviews, readings, and radio programs, and Lipton’s archives for his Los Angeles Free Press column, “Radio Free America,” are also included • Illuminati Press: literary publications published between 1983 and 1988 by this Los Angeles small press • Rolfe/Lennon: articles (some photocopied) on Southern Californian literature, politics, and entertainment and on Jewish subjects written by the team of journalists Lionel Rolfe (b. 1942) and Nigey Lennon (b. 1954) between 1970 and the present, along with drafts for Rolfe’s Literary L.A. (1979) • Rupert Hughes: archives of Los Angeles novelist, biographer, screenwriter, and musicologist Rupert Hughes (1872–1956), including subject files, typescripts, correspondence, published articles, and personal memorabilia • Stephen Longstreet: typescripts, galleys, and drawings for books published by novelist, screenwriter, and art historian Stephen Longstreet (b. 1907), who taught creative writing at the University of Southern California between 1975 and 1980 • Henry Z. Osborne: miscellaneous papers relating to the Osborne family’s business and real estate activities in Los Angeles between 1900 and 1920; Californians twice elected Henry Zenas Osborne (1848–1923) to the U.S. House of Representatives • James Arkatov: approximately two hundred black-and-white images of classical conductors and soloists photographed in concert by Los Angeles Philharmonic cellist James Arkatov between 1950 and 1980.