Collection inventory

Overview of the Collection
Creator:	Pratt, Fletcher, 1897-1956.
Title:	Fletcher Pratt Papers
Inclusive Dates:	ca. 1935-1955?
Quantity:	18 cartons
Abstract:	Correspondence, manuscripts of the American military, naval, and science fiction novelist.
Language:	English
Repository:	Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries 222 Waverly Avenue Syracuse, NY 13244-2010 https://library.syracuse.edu/special-collections-research-center

Biographical History

Fletcher Pratt (1897-1956) was an American military, naval, and science fiction novelist. Born in Buffalo, New York, Pratt is said to have been raised on an Indian reservation. He attended Hobart College for a year. During World War I he served with the War Library Service. During his intensive writing career, Pratt wrote chiefly on military and naval subjects, but also in the field of science fiction, collaborating often with L. Sprague DeCamp.

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Scope and Contents of the Collection

The Fletcher Pratt Papers consists of correspondence-subject files, manuscripts and research material, and a small amount of printed material and memorabila. Correspondence is primarily with publications ( Atlanta Journal, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Harper's Magazine, The Infantry Journal, Pacific Spectator) and publishers (Ballantine Books, Bobbs-Merrill, Doubleday & Company, Gnome Press, Henry Holt and Company, Penguin) but also includes a few organizations (e.g., Science Fiction League of America). Subject files cover miscellaneous topics, most relating to either the Navy (British Navy at War, First Philippine Sea, 4th Fleet, German Navy) or general military (Eleven Generals, Macarthur, Munitions and equipment, Pearl Harbor, Spies/espionage). Manuscripts and research material contains material for more than 150 articles, essays, stories, and other pieces of writing by Pratt, as well as a small amount of printed material (book reviews, published stories and similar). Memorabilia contains clippings and nine scrapbooks.

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Arrangement of the Collection

All series are arranged alphabetically.

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Restrictions

Access Restrictions

The majority of our archival and manuscript collections are housed offsite and require advanced notice for retrieval. Researchers are encouraged to contact us in advance concerning the collection material they wish to access for their research.

Use Restrictions

Written permission must be obtained from SCRC and all relevant rights holders before publishing quotations, excerpts or images from any materials in this collection.

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Subject Headings

Persons

Subjects

Genres and Forms

Occupations

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Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Preferred citation for this material is as follows:

Fletcher Pratt Papers,
Special Collections Research Center,
Syracuse University Libraries

Acquisition Information

Gift of John D. Clark, 1970.

Finding Aid Information

Created by: --
Date: July 1998
Revision history: 6 Dec 2007 - converted to EAD (MRC); 23 May 2008 - acquisition info (MRC); 13 Jul 2021 - scrapbooks rehoused, American Mercury correspondence added (MRC)

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Inventory

	Biographical
Box 1		Miscellaneous

	Correspondence
Box 1		General A-G
Box 1		General H-Z
Box 1		Harry Altshuler (Author's Agent)
Box 1		American Broadcasting Company
Box 1		American magazines - lists of stories sold with date and topic, sorted by title of magazine (e.g. Atlantic Monthly, Colliers, etc.) (2 folders)
Box 1		American Mercury
Box 1		Atlanta Journal
Box 1		Ballantine Books
Box 1		Bobbs-Merrill Company
		Bread Loaf
Box 1			Correspondence/ conference schedules/ address lists
Box 1			The Crumb
Box 1			Drawings/ Creative writings (2 folders)
Box 1			Writer's Conference (Middlebury College Bulletin)
Box 1		Charles Scribner's Sons
Box 1		Civil War Round Table (blank letters and envelopes)
		Correspondence
Box 1			"Kicks and Kurses"
Box 1			Navy Department
Box 1			"Nut Letters" and a Ginkgo leaf from 1951
Box 1			Secretary of the Navy
Box 1		Coward-McCann, Inc.
Box 1		Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Box 1		Memorandums
Box 1		Bernard DeVoto
Box 2		Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Box 2		Duell, Sloan & Pearce, Inc.
Box 2		Detective Stories
Box 2		Fantasia
Box 2		Fantasy and Science Fiction
Box 2		Funk & Wagnall's Company
Box 2		Gnome Press
Box 2		Green Leaf Publishing Co.
Box 2		Guggenheimer & Untermyer
Box 2		Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.
Box 2		Harper's Magazine
Box 2		Harper and Brothers Publishers
Box 2		Harrison-Hilton Books
Box 2		Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, Inc.
Box 2		Hawthorn Books Inc, Publishers
Box 2		Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
Box 2		The Infantry Journal
Box 2		Journal and Sentinel
Box 2		Little, Brown & Company
Box 2		The Lotos Club
Box 2		Macmillan Company
Box 2		Maps, charts, and Naval photographs (2 folders)
Box 2		National Better Business Bureau
Box 2		New York Author's Club
Box 2		Otis Kline Associates, Inc.
Box 2		Pacific Spectator
Box 2		Penguin Books
		Photographs
Box 2			Pratt alone
Box 2			Pratt with others
Box 2			Mrs. F. Pratt
Box 2		Pratt (book covers)
Box 2		Prime Press
Box 2		RKO Radiopictures, Inc.
Box 2		Random House
Box 2		Reviews (written in German)
Box 2		Rinehart & Company, Inc.
Box 2		Robert Hale Limited
Box 2		Science Fiction League of America
Box 2		Smith & Durrell, Inc.
Box 2		Stellar Publishing Corporation
Box 2		Street and Smith Publications, Inc.
Box 2		Twayne Publishers
Box 2		Vanguard Press Inc.
Box 2		Viking Press Inc.-Publishers
Box 2		W.W. Norton & Company
Box 2		William Sloan Associates
Box 2		Yale University Press
Box 2		Ziff-Davis Publishing Company

	Subject files
Box 3		Aleutians
Box 3		Army - U.S. History
Box 3		Bases
Box 3		Bismarck Sea
Box 3		Bonins Operations
Box 3		Borneo
Box 3		"The British Navy at War"
Box 3		Casablanca
Box 3		Office of Censorship (and related papers)
Box 3		Central Pacific
Box 3		Communications
Box 3		Coral Sea
Box 3		"Desron 23"
Box 3		"Eleven Generals"
Box 3		Esquire Articles
Box 3		First Philippine Sea
Box 3		"4th Fleet"
Box 3		Freak Weapons
Box 3		German Navy
Box 3		"Hollywood Squadron"
Box 3		Italy/ Sicily
Box 3		Interview with Pratt
Box 3		Japanese Navy
Box 3		Kwajalein (Central Pacific)
Box 3		Leyte Gulf
Box 3		Luzon
		MacArthur
Box 3			AREA
Box 3			Command
Box 3			Halsey
Box 3			Offensive
Box 3		Magazine articles
Box 3		Marianas/ Saipan
Box 3		Marshall and Gilbert
Box 3		Mediterranean
Box 3		Midway
Box 4		Munitions and Equipment
Box 4		Naval Africa
Box 4		"The Navy"
		Navy Department Communiqués
Box 4			#8-117 (incomplete run) 2/16/41- 9/3/42
Box 4			#301- 400 3/6/43-6/3/43
Box 4			#401- 500 6/4/43
Box 4			#501- 539, 541-582 2/4/44- 3/1/45
		Navy Personnel
Box 4			Admiral Halsey
Box 4			Admiral Nimitz
Box 4			Admirals (miscellaneous)
Box 4			Miscellaneous Officers
Box 4		Navy - Italy, France, Sweden, Russia
Box 4		Navy - U.S. History (3 folders)
Box 4		"The Navy's War"
Box 4		New Guinea
Box 4		New Ireland
Box 4		Normandy
Box 4		Okinawa
Box 4		"Ordeal by Fire"
Box 4		Paramushiru
Box 4		Pearl Harbor
Box 4		Propaganda
Box 4		Salt Lake City
Box 4		SAVO Island
		Solomons
Box 4			"Solomons"
Box 4			"Battle of Cape Esperance"
Box 4			"Battle of Guadalcanal"
Box 4			"Battle of Santa Cruz"
Box 5		Spies/ Espionage
Box 5		Stanton
		SUBS
Box 5			Atlantic
Box 5			Mines
Box 5			Pacific
Box 5		U.S.S. Biloxi
Box 5		U.S.S. Salt Lake City
Box 5		World War I
Box 5		Miscellaneous unsorted (5 folders)
Box 6		Miscellaneous unsorted (9 folders)
Box 6		Legal material- Pratt vs. Future Publications, Inc., and John Raymond

	Manuscripts and research material
Box 7		Aaron Wand and The Picket Line
Box 7		Adventure of Joshua Barney
Box 7		All About Rockets and Jets
Box 7		Another Trafalgar
Box 7		Atom Submarine and Her Skipper
Box 7		Atoms, Matter, and Energy
Box 7		Battles That Changed History (2 folders)
Box 7		Bell, Book and Candle
Box 7		Best Reported War in History
Box 7		Big Pacific Push
Box 7		Blood on the Ground
Box 7		Blood, Sweet Blood
Box 7		Book of Famous and Decisive Battles (2 folders)
Box 7		Book Reviews
Box 7		Boyle of the Chasseur
Box 7		Building of the Atom Submarine
Box 7		Burp in Time
Box 7		CA 25
Box 7		Campaign Beyond Glory
Box 7		Campaign in the Coral Sea
Box 7		Campaign in the Java Sea
Box 7		Captain Who Tried to Sell His Ship
Box 7		Cards are Dealt
Box 7		Carnelian Cube - galleys (4 folders)
Box 7		Caribbean Command
Box 8		Case of the 14m man
Box 8		Castles of Chron
Box 8		Chance for a Piece of Change
Box 8		Chinese Invention
Box 8		City of the Living Dead (2 folders)
Box 8		Civil War (2 folders)
Box 8		Civil War in Pictures (text)
Box 8		Code Experts War (2 folders)
Box 8		[Collected Pratt science fiction]
Box 8		Comic Strips
Box 8		Compact History of the United States Navy (3 folders)
Box 9		Crisis of the Computers
Box 9		Curious Literature of the Comic Strips
Box 9		Current Post-War Naval Developments
Box 9		Dr. Grimshaw's Sanitarium
Box 9		Double Jeopardy (2 folders)
Box 9		Elemental Question
Box 9		Eleven Generals (2 folders)
Box 9		Engineers From Europe
Box 9		Estimate of the Situation
Box 9		Facts of Soviet Espionage (outline)
Box 9		Famous Inventors and Their Inventions
Box 9		Fighting Machine
Box 9		First of the Great Raids
Box 9		Frost and Her Playmates
Box 9		Future of Cities (outline)
Box 9		Gavagan's Bar
Box 9		General Can't Write English
Box 9		Goodbye Street
Box 9		Great Steel Panic
Box 9		Green Thumb
Box 9		Grift Goes Legitimate
Box 9		Hail Caesar
Box 9		Harold Shea (3 folders)
Box 9		Here, Putzi!
Box 9		Heroic Years
Box 10		History of the South Atlantic Campaign
Box 10		How the Censor Rigged the News
Box 10		Interviews (notes) with Pacific Fleet Personnel
Box 10		Invention of the Atomic Submarine
Box 10		Inventions
Box 10		Is the Navy Ready?
Box 10		January Easy Chair, by Bernard DeVoto
Box 10		Keyport Auction (outline)
Box 10		Lament of Lamethenon
Box 10		Lantflex and the Lost Plane
Box 10		Longview
Box 10		Loss of the Wasp
Box 10		Lost Battalion - includes mimeographed script for radio adaptation on WNYC, 13 Apr 1938
Box 10		Mad Destroyer
Box 10		Man Who Awoke
Box 10		Man Who Never Lived
Box 10		Man Who Pulls the Trigger
Box 10		Man With a Million Dollars Cash
Box 10		Mathematics of Magic
Box 10		Military and Naval History of the United States (2 folders)
Box 10		Military Genius of Abraham Lincoln (preface)
Box 10		Moon and I
Box 10		Monitor and the Merimac
Box 10		Most Important Job in the Navy
Box 10		Mutinies in Foreign Navies
Box 10		Mysteries of Midway
Box 10		Mystery of the Hittitis
Box 10		Napoleon- research notes
Box 11		Napoleon- research notes (4 folders)
Box 11		Napoleon (2 folders)
Box 11		[Naval aviation book] (3 folders)
Box 11		Naval History of the Civil War (outline, research)
Box 12		Navy Has Wings
Box 12		Nightwork (2 folders)
Box 12		No Pity for Heroes (2 folders)
Box 12		Obscene Language is Not Necessary for Realism
Box 12		Oh, Say Can You See
Box 12		One Destroyer
Box 12		One Man's Meat
Box 12		One-Ship Fleet
Box 12		Ordeal by Fire (3 folders)
Box 12		Ordeal by Fire (television adaptation)
Box 12		Our New Navy
Box 12		Palimpsest of St. Augustine
Box 12		Pardon My Mistake
Box 12		Pattern Repeat
Box 12		Pictorial History of the Civil War
Box 12		Planet Lithia
Box 12		Preble's Boys (2 folders)
Box 12		Preble's Boys-notes (2 folders)
Box 13		Preble's Boys-notes (2 folders)
Box 13		Red King (3 folders)
Box 13		Reign of the Navy
Box 13		Revenge
Box 13		Rhodes, a Study in Sea Power
Box 13		Road to Empire - correspondences
Box 13		Roaring Trumpet
Box 13		Roger Bacon Formula
Box 13		Roger's Reef, by John T. Goodrich
Box 13		Scientific Articles
Box 13		Sea Power and Today's War
Box 13		Second Chance
Box 13		Secret and Urgent (2 folders)
Box 13		Seed From Space
Box 13		Ship That Could Shoot
Box 13		Ship That Fought the War
Box 13		Ship That Made Like a Fleet
Box 13		Should Human Population Increase Be Controlled?
Box 13		Silver Accident (outline)
Box 13		Square-Cube Law
Box 14		Stanton: Lincoln's Secretary of War (3 folders )
Box 14		Strange Deed of Captain Glenney
Box 14		Submarine is on the Ropes
Box 14		Submarines Pacific
Box 14		Super-Carrier Forrestad
Box 14		Superstitions in Sports
Box 14		Symbiosis
Box 14		Thing in the Woods
Box 14		Third King (2 folders)
Box 14		Three Kings - notes
Box 14		This was Trafalgar
Box 14		Three Valdemars
Box 14		Turkey-shoot of Saipan
Box 14		Twilight of the Ideals (2 folders )
Box 14		Undying Fire
Box 14		Unexpected Planet
Box 15		United States Navy History-Revolution
Box 15		United States Navy History-WWI-press stories
Box 15		Violation of Rules
Box 15		Wall of Serpents
Box 15		Wanderer's Return
Box 15		War of the Giants
Box 15		War on Western Waters
Box 15		Weissenbroch Spectacles
Box 15		What Happened to Cicero?
Box 15		Who Gave Their Lives?
Box 15		Who Pays For It?
Box 15		World Around the Corner
Box 15		World War II and the Changing Conception of Sea Power
Box 15		[Untitled science-fiction collection]
Box 15		[Unidentified] (6 folders )
Box 15		Printed Material
Box 15			Book reviews
Box 15			Civil War
Box 15			Foreign Language editions
Box 15			Infantry Journal (4 issues)
Box 15			New Jersey
Box 16		Pratt prints from Pacific Spectator
Box 16		Pratt prints from U.S. Naval Institution Proceedings
Box 16		Pratt stories from Harper's
Box 16		"Roundup of the Fleet", Our Navy
Box 16		"Roundup on the War", Our Navy
Box 16		Science Fiction (5 folders)
Box 16		World War II (5 folders)
Box 16		[Unsorted manuscripts] (3 folders)

	Memorabilia
Box 17		Miscellaneous personal items - "Regulations for Correspondents Accompanying U.S. Army Forces in the Field"; humorous song about DESRON 23; story about the Rawalpindi; etc.
Box 17		Newspaper clippings - includes press releases from US military, book reviews, etc. (14 folders)
		Scrapbooks
			Pages of all scrapbooks are EXTREMELY brittle. Handle as little, and as carefully, as possible.
Box 17			"GIMMI 88" 1929-1930 - newspaper clippings, notes, cartoons, correspondence, etc. relating to a card game released by Katagiri Brothers, similar to bridge, called "Gimmi-88" or "Hachi-hachi"
Oversize 1			Clippings of reviews of Pratt's books 1941-1943 (1 volume)
Oversize 2			Clippings of articles by Pratt for the New York Post 1939-1940 (1 volume)
Oversize 3			Clippings of reviews of Pratt's books 1935-1940 (2 volumes)
Box 18			Miscellaneous scrapbooks (6 volumes)

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