Scope and arrangement
The records of Audience consist of the magazine's author files and administrative files.
The bulk of the collection consists of over 2,000 author files arranged alphabetically. These files contain, at a minimum, a reader's comment sheet, giving the author's name, submission title, agent, publisher, editor, Audience staff comments, date received and date returned. More complete files include agreements, contracts, correspondence from writers and their agents, publicity materials, and, occasionally original manuscripts. The author files also include files on literary agents, artists, and photographers who submitted material to Audience. Some notable authors with more detailed files are Nelson Algren, Maya Angelou, John Ashbery, Margaret Atwood, W.H. Auden, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Thomas Berger, Jorge Luis Borges, Gwendolyn Brooks, Anthony Burgess, Frank Capra, Raymond Carver, Neal Cassady, John Cheever, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, William Golding, Nadine Gordimer, Joseph Heller, Jack Kerouac, Arthur Miller, Vladimir Nabokov, Cynthia Ozick, Walker Percy, George Plimpton, Philip Roth, John Updike, and Tom Wolfe.
The administrative files contain correspondence, internal memoranda, contact sheets, budgets, personnel files, publicity files, and financial records pertaining to all aspects of the running of the magazine. The issue files contain materials specific to each issue of Audience, such as plans, schedules and correspondence.
The Audience Records are arranged in two series:
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1956-1977
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1963-1976