John Hay (1915-2011) papers (Ms. 2007.008)

The John Hay (1915-2011) papers represent a portion of the working life of John Hay. The naturalist, writer and poet spent most of his adult life on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, observing the birds and fish of the area and attempting to protect the fragile ecology of the Cape from the ever-growing number of tourists and settlers, their motels and mansions. In order to present the papers in the most useful manner, they have been grouped into four series: correspondence, research files, reviews of Hay's published books and, lastly, his writings.

While much of the material in the collection is undated, there are letters from as early as 1939 and as late as 2011. The bulk of the correspondence in the collection consists of letters to John Hay, but there are also letters by him, as well as letters from others to his father Clarence, and to his wife, the former Kristi Putnam, along with a generic letter to stockholders of a large company and assorted letters to and from other correspondents which refer to Hay's books. There is a particularly extensive section of correspondence between Hay and Peter Farb which explains their collaboration on The Atlantic Shore. These exchanges are housed in a separate sub-series comprising several folders arranged in date order.

Hay's papers also contain research or reference materials which have been filed alphabetically. The information covers a wide range of Hay's interests: everything from recommendations for wild flowers suitable for New England gardens, American Indian dancing, alewives, box turtles and the 1959 wreck of a trawler on the Cape Cod shore. Also included in this series are printed advertisements for Hay's books. Of particular note are photographs of the Astor Expedition to the Galapagos Islands taken by his father Clarence L. Hay in 1930.

John Hay's friends and his agent, Richard Winslow, made sure Hay received reviews of his books whether they came from local newspapers or from papers as far away as Texas. Hay saved these, often just as they came, clipped to a letter or one of Winslow's calling cards. Many of these have cryptic comments penned on them by Winslow. The reviews of more than half a dozen of Hay's thirty publications are here arranged alphabetically by the title of the book reviewed.

Hay kept a sort of diary and took notes on his observations. The collection includes a number of these journals, some yellow legal tablets and a sketch book, most of which are undated. There are a few journals that Hay labeled by the title of the book for which he was gathering information, and these are filed with draft material for the respective books.

All the journals are somewhat Joycean in style; they meander in the space of a single page from phone numbers to book titles, from Hay's sketches to children's scribbles, and from timed observations of fish migrations to fragments of poetry forming as the poet wrote. John Hay saved rough drafts of articles and book chapters as well as galley proofs and typescripts. These are filed to the extent possible, alphabetically by title or topic. All have been organized in folders in the rough order in which they were found. In some cases, there is accompanying correspondence which explains the notes and corrections, and for these, the letters have been kept with the drafts. Materials without title or clear topic are filed at the end. Publishers sought Hay's reviews of other writer's books on natural history and ecology, and there are copies of some of these reviews in the collection as well, filed together in the folder entitled Book reviews. Also included in the section of writings by John Hay are published articles and poems from magazines as different as Sports Illustrated and The Prairie Schooner.