Scope and arrangement
The earliest scattered papers are from the middle 1920's, when Mr. Bennett was Advertising Manager of the Chandler Motor Co., Cleveland, Ohio. More extensive papers appear after the early 1930's, with the development of the Typophiles, a group of men interested in graphics and fine printing, as a publishing organization, and Mr. Bennett's progress through the publicity department of the Moergenthaler Linotype Co., which he joined in 1928, and its subsidiary, the William H. Denney Co., to Typographic Promotion Manager of the Mergenthaler Linotype Co.
The Mergenthaler Linotype correspondence includes internal memoranda, memoranda to field representatives, material on advertising, correspondence with clients on matters of design and production, and general correspondence. There are individual folders for many promotional trips, conferences, exhibition juries, and lecture engagements. In the period before 1942 only files for the early letters of the alphabet (A-D) have been preserved. A considerable amount of material dealing with Mr. Bennett's relationship with Jackson Burke, Vice-president of the Mergenthaler Linotype Co., was destroyed by the Estate. Correspondence with certain notable figures, including Rudolph Ruzicka, W. A. Dwiggins, Bruce Rogers, and F. W. Goudy, together with the manuscript and other material related to an unpublished biography of F. W. Goudy, was removed for sale by Mr. Herman Cohen of the Chiswick Book Shop, New York, before receipt of the papers at The New York Public Library.
The Typophiles took shape under Paul Bennett's guidance in the early 1930's. The material in the Bennett Papers includes records of membership and attendance at the regular luncheon meetings, orders and accounts for the volumes published under their imprint, a large amount of design-oriented matter (correspondence, sketches, dummies, specifications), and general correspondence.
Mr. Bennett wrote for a number of periodicals, including the American Printer, Colophon, Linotype News, Penrose Annual, Printing, and Publishers' Weekly. He was a contributor to The Dolphin and editor of Books and Printing, a Treasury for Typophiles (World Publishing Co., 1951). His biography of F, W. Goudy reached dummy stage before conflict with the publisher brought about the book's withdrawal. Correspondence relating to these activities, together with research notes, typescripts, dummies and proofs, is included in the Bennett Papers. There is a small amount of personal family correspondence, including letters from the Bennett's son Donald to his family during overseas action in the 1939-45 War.
Correspondents include John Archer, Elmer Adler, Peter Beilenson, Joseph Blumenthal, Will Bradley, T. M. Cleland, P. J. Conkwright, W. A. Dwiggins, F. W. Goudy, Henry Watson Kent, William Kittredge, A. A. Knopf, George McKay, George Macy, Will Ransom, Ernst Reichl, Ward Ritchie, Bruce Rogers, Carl Purington Rollins, George Salter, Rollo Silver, Oliver Simon, James Shand, Paul Standard, Norman Strouse, Walter Tracy, Jan van Krimpen, Beatrice Warde, Hermann Zapf.