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Creator
Kahn, E. J. (Ely Jacques), 1916-1994
Call number
MssCol 1611
Physical description
53.72 linear feet (120 boxes, 1 other item)
Preferred Citation

E.J. Kahn papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library

Repository
Manuscripts and Archives Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.Restrictions apply

Ely Jacques Kahn, Jr., the son of the eminent Art-Deco architect, Ely Jacques Kahn, was a prolific free-lance journalist, author of 27 non-fiction books, and longtime staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. The bulk of the papers reflect Kahn's research for his wide-ranging free-lance articles, New Yorker columns and articles, and books.

Biographical/historical information

One of The New Yorker's most popular and prolific staff writers, Ely Jacques Kahn, Jr. published twenty seven books - (some of which were based on articles previously featured in The New Yorker) - and wrote on a wide variety of subjects in hundreds of articles and profiles for The New Yorker and other periodicals. Born in Manhattan in 1916, Kahn was the son of the prominent architect, Ely Jacques Kahn. His mother, Elsie Plaut Mayer, was a writer. His paternal grandfather, Jacques Kahn, came to the United States from Austria after the Civil War and went into the business of importing ornamental glass from France and Belgium. Kahn's mother's family was French and named Lazard. Thanks to this cosmopolitan background Kahn grew up fluent in French and German as well as English.

Kahn graduated in 1933 from the Horace Mann High School in New York and received the A. B. degree from Harvard in 1937. While still a senior there he began his long and affectionate association with The New Yorker when he was he was invited by St. Clair McKelway to join the staff as a reporter for the "Talk of the Town column". His debut article, "My African Potentate", appeared in the issue of April 3, 1937, and his first New Yorker profile appeared in 1938, a year after his graduation from Harvard. After the outbreak of World War II in 1941 he served in the South Pacific as a writer with the rank of chief warrant officer. While in the army he wrote accounts of his experiences in the South Pacific, among them, G. I. Jungle, and McNair, Educator of an Army, which appeared in The New Yorker and other periodicals. He was discharged from the army in 1945.

Among the books Kahn published in his long writing career are his first book, The Army Life (1942); The Peculiar War (1952) on the war in Korea; A Reporter Here and There (1961); The Stragglers (1962), a compelling book about Japanese soldiers who, many years after the end of the war, were discovered hiding out in the caves and jungles of Guam and the Philippines and were repatriated to Japan. (Kahn also wrote an expressionistic play based on the book); The World of Swope, (1964); The Separated People: A Look at Contemporary South Africa (1968); Harvard Through Change and Through Storm (1969); The China Hands: America's Foreign Service Officers and What Befell Them (1975); About The New Yorker and Me (1979); and, Supermarketer of the World, (1991).

Kahn died in 1994 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, of injuries sustained in an automobile accident.

Scope and arrangement

The bulk of the papers reflect Kahn's research for his wide-ranging free-lance articles, New Yorker columns and articles, and books.

The E.J. Kahn papers are arranged in six series:

  • Correspondence

    The general correspondence is chiefly with readers, publishers, editors, research assistants, colleagues, and friends, and is arranged by year.

  • Subjects Files

    The name and subjects files reflect the gathering of information for Kahn's books and wide-ranging articles for The New Yorker and other periodicals. They include correspondence (of particular interest are Kahn's letters written to his family from South Africa) and research material consisting of articles, books, clippings, leaflets, pamphlets, periodicals, trade and specialized newspapers, reports, and typed interviews. There are also innumerable typed and handwritten notes (incisive, and often sardonic in tone), and typescripts and galley proofs of his articles and books.

    Among the subjects of the articles and books covered in this series are the landmark harassment suit filed by the Socialist Workers Party against the U. S. Attorney General; the fate of the State Department's China Service officers, who were blamed by conservative critics for the "loss" of mainland China to communism; the development of the Coca-Cola Company and the evolution of the brand name "Coca Cola" as a world-wide symbol of American economic colonialism; the careers of the actors Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart; the repatriation of Japanese soldiers discovered several years after the end of World War II living in the jungles of Guam and the Philippines; an emotional reunion of the survivors of a hand-to-hand struggle in the North Atlantic between an American Destroyer-Escort and a German U-boat; the efforts of the Negro Ensemble Company to survive; Dwayne Andreas, the wealthy businessman and one of the signers of the historic trade agreement between the American Trade Consortium and the Soviet Foreign Economic Consortium; the field work of the ethnobotanist Richard E. Schultes, who spent many years studying and testing hallucinogenic drugs in the rainforests of Amazonia; and the files relating to several writing assignments in South Africa. The name and subjects files are arranged and boxed alphabetically, and indexed and cross-referenced to other files or series. Italics in the index indicate titles of Kahn's articles, columns, or books.

  • Writings by Kahn

    This series consists of typescripts of Kahn's articles, New Yorker columns, plays, and untitled fiction. Also included are agreements, an option agreement for a film, and contracts, for writing assignments and books. In the Subject Files are additional articles, column, and plays, organized by title. There is also a proof of an article by his son, E. J. Kahn III.

  • Writings by Others

    Kahn, E. J. III. The New Yorker and Dad. Publishing agreements, agent's letters, writing assignments, and other related documents.

  • Audio/Visual Material
  • Personal Correspondence and Papers

    This series consists chiefly of family correspondence, a diary of a trip to Europe; estate papers, and photographs of Kahn, his first wife Virginia Rice Kahn, his extended family, and civilian and military friends.

Administrative information

Processing information

Compiled by Richard Salvato

Using the collection

Location

Manuscripts and Archives Division
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788
Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room, Third Floor, Room 328

Access restrictions

Box 114 is closed until the year 2050.