Hubert Jennings papers (Ms.2016.002)

Series 1. Fernando Pessoa Papers is an extensive collection of materials produced or collected by Jennings in the course of his research on the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. Jennings left a book manuscript on Pessoa's life and poetry as well as extensive transcriptions and translations of Pessoa's work. Many of these translations were not published in Jennings's lifetime and his transcriptions of Pessoa's poetry include little-known works that Jennings may have been the first to transcribe. The following items are particularly noteworthy:

• the folder titled "File I," which includes many artifacts and letters pertaining to Jennings's principal findings and publications about Pessoa;
• the "Red Diary," in which Jennings chronicled his experience in Portugal in 1968;
• the collection of artifacts (transcriptions, photocopies, and photographs) that Jennings gathered together for the Second International Symposium on Fernando Pessoa (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, 1983).

Series 2. Correspondence includes personal and research-related letters, with the bulk relating to Jennings's work on Fernando Pessoa. There is a series of letters sent to Jennings from several members of Fernando Pessoa's family, both before and after Jennings's research in Lisbon in 1968. Correspondence between Jennings and his friend (and fellow Pessoa scholar) Alexandrino Severino is also notable. The series also includes copies or clippings of newspaper items mentioning Jennings's work, which may have been sent to Jennings by Severino. There is also extensive correspondence relating to the publication in 1986 of Jennings's book Fernando Pessoa in Durban (a translation of his earlier Os Dois Exílios, 1984).

Series 3. Literary Projects contains manuscripts, clippings, and published material belonging to Jennings's literary projects in poetry, fiction, literary translation (not including Pessoa), and critical scholarship. Jennings wrote a substantial number of short stories, which he had hoped (as late as the late 1980s) to publish as a book. The stories explore a variety of thematic and formal territory, ranging from non-fictional accounts of outdoor excursions to allegories on race relations and coloniality to fantastic encounters between long dead poets.

Series 4. Memoirs comprises the extensive personal memoirs written by Jennings in the last years of his life. In four volumes and an additional notebook, Jennings's "Cracked Record" presents the author's recollections on a variety of personal and professional matters, spanning his early childhood, his experiences in World War I, his education, his career in teaching, and many personal relationships.

Series 5. Catalog consists of one small notebook in which Jennings kept an index of his papers (and which also contains some additional writings). The organization of the Jennings papers is based on the physical organization of the materials as they were received and on the scheme laid out in the Catalog.

Series 6. Family contains a small number of items produced by or about members of Jennings's family.