- unitid
-
{"value"=>"186098", "type"=>"local_mss"}
{"value"=>"Berg Coll MSS 186098", "type"=>"local_call"}
{"value"=>"b23337018", "type"=>"local_b"}
- unitdate
-
{"value"=>"1940-2022", "type"=>"inclusive", "normal"=>"1940/2022"}
- unittitle
-
{"value"=>"David Plante papers"}
- physdesc
-
{"format"=>"structured", "physdesc_components"=>[{"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"97 boxes", "unit"=>"containers"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"40.21 linear feet", "unit"=>"linear_feet"}]}
- repository
-
{"value"=>"<span class=\"corpname\">Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature</span>"}
- abstract
-
{"value"=>"David Robert Plante (born 1940) is an American novelist, memorist, poet, and diarist currently residing in Lucca, Italy. The David Plante papers, dated from 1940 to 2022, chronicle Plante's daily life and creative works. The collection holds address books, correspondence, datebooks, diaries, drawings, ephemera, notes, photographs, poems, and printed matter."}
- langmaterial
-
{"value"=>"English"}
{"value"=>"The collection is predominantly in English. Some correspondence in French, Greek, and Italian."}
- origination
-
{"value"=>"Plante, David", "type"=>"persname"}
- bioghist
-
{"value"=>"<p>David Robert Plante is an American novelist, memoirist, poet, and diarist currently residing in Lucca, Italy. Plante is the second-youngest son of Aniclet Plante and Albina Bisson. He was born on March 4, 1940 in Providence, Rhode Island. Plante attended the University of Louvain and graduated from Boston College in 1961. For most his life, Plante lived in London with his partner of forty years, Nikos Stangos, (1936-2004) a Greek editor, poet, and commission editor and director for Penguin Books and Thames & Hudson. Stangos was influential in literary and artistic communities, working closely with many artists and writers. Stangos' book of poetry entitled <span class=\"title\">Pure Reason</span> was edited by Plante (published posthumously in 2007).</p> <p> Plante wrote meticulous details of his life's journey in autobiographical diaries that recall his career, colleagues, family, friends, relationships, and travels while establishing his career in Europe and the United States. During the years of 1988 to 1989, Plante travelled to Moscow and St. Petersburg. He wrote about his experience with the cultural, literary, and politics of Russia. Plante is an influential literary scholar, teacher, and writer, and holds the distinction of Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing at Columbia University.</p> <p>Plante has published more than a dozen novels and memoirs, one of which, <span class=\"title\">The Family</span> (1978), was nominated for a National Book Award in 1979. Other publications include <span class=\"title\">The Ghost of Henry James</span> (1970), <span class=\"title\">Difficult Women</span> (1983), <span class=\"title\">The Pure Lover</span> (2009), and <span class=\"title\">Worlds Apart</span> (2015). <span class=\"title\">The Pure Lover</span> is Plante's elegy to his partner of forty years, Nikos Stangos, who died of cancer in 2004.</p> <p>Plante was the 1975 Henfield Fellow at the University of East Anglia, a Guggenheim Fellow in 1982, and received the Prize for Artistic Merit from the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters in 1984. Prior to moving to Lucca, Italy in 2019, Plante resided in London, England.</p>"}
- scopecontent
-
{"value"=>"<p>The David Plante papers, dating from 1940 to 2022, document over sixty years of David Plante's life as a memoirist and diarist. Plante's diaries span his life in the United States and living abroad in Europe. The collection also holds correspondence, datebooks, address books, manuscripts, legal documents, photographs, poems, printed matter, drawings, and ephemera.</p> <p>The collection is arranged into five series comprising Diaries; Datebooks and Address Books; Writings; Publications by Plante; and Personal.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p class='list-head'>The David Plante papers are arranged in five series:</p>\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/brg/186098#c1738055'>Series I: Diaries</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1959-2022</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The Diaries are the bulk of the collection with sixty-three years of autobiographical writings by Plante. From his late teens to the first part of the twenty-first century, Plante's diaries have daily entries that spans about 131 volumes. As an avid diarist, Plante wrote nearly every day; these dairies usually represent a month of writing. However, diaries would overlap in dates, indicating that Plante may have written two diaries simultaneously. Plante's early diaries include references to college, friends, relationships, travels throughout Europe, and the beginning of his career as a writer. For example, <span class=\"title\">The Atlantic Month Press</span> rejected his articles \"The Event\" and \"The Sleep\" described in a letter dated November 5, 1965 (Diary 1965 November 1-1966 January 29). This early setback would be followed by success with a contract for Plante's first book <span class=\"title\">The Ghost of Henry James</span> (Diary 1967-1971 October 25).</p> <p>These diaries demonstrate Plante's family, personal relationships, and friends were an important part of his life. Interfiled between the pages are letters from his mother and siblings whom he kept in contact while living abroad. An important subject of these diaries is Plante's partner of forty years, Nikos Stragos, who died in 2004. Stangos' letters to Plante are also interleaved; Stangos was often the subject of many of the undated and untitled typed poems inserted throughout the volumes. A dust jacket of Plante's book <span class=\"title\">The Pure Lover, A Memoir of Grief</span> is interleaved (Diary 2009 July 6-25). The diaries, through the decades, continue to chronicle the everyday happenstances of Plante's life in London, England, and later Lucca, Italy, with a particular focus on his relationships, as well as his observations about major social and politic events. Plante recounted the friends who visited, wrote, or called; the plays, operas, art gallery openings, and shows he attended; meals he cooked or restaurants he visited; the daily weather; the deaths of friends and family members; his dreams; and his health. He also wrote about the 2016 American presidential election; Brexit, the emergence of COVID-19, and the George Floyd protests in early 2020; and the 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol.</p> <p>As noted, the volumes have many items interleaved. These inserts act as supplemental material and are often the subject of the entries themselves. Plante frequently notated where a certain insert was most relevant within the entry via a special notation, with a four or five-star symbol, or a simple 'See insert here' note.</p> <p>Email correspondence with friends and family comprise the bulk of the inserts. Other formats include poetry in Italian, French, Greek, and English; news clippings; sheet music; manuscript drafts; event tickets; museum brochures; concert programs; playbills; sketches; reviews of Plante's books; postcards; typed diary entries; menus; photographs; collected quotes from published books; and a booklet in braille. All inserts are referenced in the entries in which they were interleaved.</p> <p>Plante's diary became more inwardly focused during the COVID lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. Instead of writing about the friends who visited, he spent the pages detailing old memories and writing poetry, which he would send to friends. He would then print their responses and tuck it into the entry date during which he received these replies. Correspondents include Matthew Meselson; Jeanne Guillemin; Mary Gordon; Edwin Frank; Edmund White; Blake Bailey; Wilson Saba; Annie Proulx; Clare Mahon; Hilton Als; Miranda Seymour; Scott Spencer; Philip Roth; Judith Ginsberg; Melvyn Bragg; and Vivian Gornick.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/brg/186098#c1744756'>Series II: Datebooks and Address Books</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1965-2010</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Datebooks, which are arranged chronologically from 1965 to 2010, comprise the bulk of the series. There are four undated address books arranged at the end of the series.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/brg/186098#c1744806'>Series III: Writings</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1957-2022</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The Writings are arranged into three groups, Manuscripts by Plante; Notebooks; and Poems. Plante's manuscripts are a combination of musing and poetry with works that include \"American Suffering,\" \"A Book of Images,\" and \"The Dying Mother of Her Country.\" The Notebooks which are distinct from the diaries reflect Plante's musings, recollections, and ideas on a variety of topics.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/brg/186098#c1744826'>Series IV: Publications</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>2018-2022</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The series holds four limited edition printings of Plante's poetry and memoirs by the Antica Tipografia Biagini, an artisan printing shop in Lucca. This series also holds \"A Selection of Stories, Published and Unpublished culled from articles written by Plante;\" <span class=\"title\">Louvain, Pictures of Band Belgium</span>, and <span class=\"title\">Tom Pilgrim's Progress Among the Consequences of Christianity And Other Drawings</span> by Mario Dubsky.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/brg/186098#c1744834'>Series V: Personal</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1940-2007</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This series includes \"David and Nikos\" Album of drawings, two 'guest books' with brief notes from visitors to Plante and Stangos' home from the early 1970s to the mid-2000s, Plante's patents, drawings by Plante from the 1950s to the 1970s, and a volume with Plante's legal documents.</p></div></li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}
- acqinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>The collection was received in two shipments. The papers, dated 1959 to 2000, was purchased in 2016; diaries dated 2017 to 2021 was a donation in 2021.</p>"}
- processinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p><span class=\"name\">Em Longan</span> processed the 2017 to 2021 diaries in <span class=\"date\">2023</span>; <span class=\"name\">Valerie Wingfield</span> processed the materials dating 1959 to 2000 in <span class=\"date\">2024</span>.</p>"}
- date_start
-
1940
- keydate
-
1940
- date_end
-
2022
- date_inclusive_start
-
1940
- date_inclusive_end
-
2022
- extent_statement
-
40.21 linear feet (97 boxes)
- prefercite
-
{"value"=>"David Plante papers, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library"}