Tiffany Thayer papers

ca. 1914 - ca. 1956

Tiffany Ellsworth Thayer (1902-1959) was born in Freeport, Illinois. He was an actor, reporter, advertising copy-writer, motion picture scenarist, and an author of thirteen novels published in the period 1930-1956. He founded The Fortean Society, an organization dedicated to continuing the work of Charles Fort (1874-1932), the American journalist, writer and investigator of occult phenomena.

The literary manuscripts and typescripts series consists of holograph and typewritten drafts of novels and short stories, some unpublished. Included is a ms. in 55 chapters which is untitled, written on the first person and located in Renaissance Italy. The drafts are mainly clear (without corrections) and are written in pencil in a very large, bold hand on heavy stock paper. Since only a few lines of text are contained on each page, the mss. tend to be very lengthy and bulky. The research notes series consist of 29 looseleaf notebooks of notes in longhand relating to the Italian Renaissance period and which served most likely as background for his Mona Lisa book and the untitled ms draft. The George F. Gillette papers consist of letters (1934-36) to Gillette mainly from librarians acknowledging receipt of his book The National Non-Mystical Cosmos and other works. A script of the work is present. There is also correspondence of Gillette with Prof. Simeon J. Koshkin relating to astronomical theory. The Alfred H. Barley papers consist of Barley's correspondence (1914-30) with Col. T. C. Skinner and others relative to the theory of A. W. Drayson on the formation of the Ice Ages. There are also mss. and notes by Barley on astronomy and astrology. The papers of Charles For (1874-1932) consist of 39 trays of notes made by Fort on occult phenomena written in pencil on small slips of paper. There are also clippings collected by Fort and a few letters addressed to him in the period 1920s-c. 1932 relating to occult phenomena. There is one box pf printers' blocks belonging to Tiffany Thayer.