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COLLECTION Identifier: MS Am 2083

Nahum Sabsay papers

Overview

Correspondence of Harvard graduate and author, Nahum Sabsay, with libraries and publishers, manuscripts of published and unpublished works, and one photograph.

Dates

  • Creation: 1924-1969

Language of Materials

Collection materials are in English.

Conditions Governing Access

There are no restrictions on physical access to this material.

Extent

2.5 linear feet (2 boxes)

The collection documents Sabsay's writing career with which his wife was also very involved. Includes correspondence with libraries and publishers, typescript copies of published and unpublished works (many with annotations by Elizabeth K. Sabsay), and one photograph.

Correspondents include Miriam Allen De Ford, Maxwell E. Perkins, Bliss Perry, and Paul Stassevitch. Typescripts include Sabsay's works: America, The death of fear, The lure, One night in November, and his short stories.

Biographical / Historical

Born in Simferopol on the Russian Crimean peninsula, Nahum Sabsay served in the Russian and Belgian armies in World War I. Fleeing the Red Army as commander of a Jewish self-defense unit, he traveled across Siberia and arrived in the U.S. in 1918. He entered Harvard to study mining engineering and graduated in 1923. He settled in California, worked as a tool and die and instrument maker, and mastered English while writing novels, short stories, and essays, which he and his wife, Elizabeth K. Sabsay, worked to get published. Sabsay died in 1965.

Arrangement

Arranged in three series:

  1. I. Correspondence of Nahum and Elizabeth K. Sabsay with others
  2. II. Compositions of Nahum Sabsay
  3. III. Other materials

Physical Location

b

Immediate Source of Acquisition

87M-115. Bequest of: Elizabeth K. Sabsay; received: 1987.

Processing Information

Processed by: Melanie Wisner

Title
Sabsay, Nahum, 1890-. Nahum Sabsay papers, 1924-1969: Guide.
Author
Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
Language of description
und
EAD ID
hou00041

Repository Details

Part of the Houghton Library Repository

Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.

Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.

Contact:
Harvard Yard
Harvard University
Cambridge MA 02138 USA
(617) 495-2440