LKE USA

DATE: 1920-1974

LEVEL: Series

Leonard Elmhirst's records relating to the United States, including an alphabetical file of correspondence with Americans, records of lecture tours by the Elmhirsts in America during the early years of World War II, correspondence and reports of editors of magazines controlled by Editorial Publications Inc, and records of association with American foundations and societies.

Leonard Elmhirst's American correspondence file includes correspondence with many Cornell University faculty, administrators, and fellow students, dating from 1920. Cornell professors represented include Cornelius Betten, Liberty Hyde Bailey, and George Lincoln Burr among many others. There is correspondence with agricultural and home economists, several of whom were brought to Dartington Hall as advisers. An interesting file records Mrs Stan (Constance) Harding's libel action against Victor Gollancz over the British publication of the memoirs of American spy Marguerite Harrison. The file includes letters of Elmhirst, Bertrand Russell, and H N Brailsford who were advising Harding.

'Official' correspondence includes letters from both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Among the records are transcripts of Leonard's diaries. There is a diary account of a day spent with Israel Sieff and the Roosevelt family at Hyde Park, New York, on the eve of the 1940 US election. As an agriculturalist, Leonard Elmhirst met and corresponded with Secretary of Agriculture and wartime Vice President Henry A Wallace. After the War, Wallace became an editor of The New Republic magazine from 1946 to 1947.

Records relating to the Elmhirsts' lecture tours record their tours of 40 state land grant colleges and universities in 1941 and 1942, speaking at the request of M L Wilson director of the USDA Extension Service. Correspondence at this time with American economists and historians reflects Leonard's interest in extending PEP methods in America, through the organisation (with Israel Sieff and others) of the National Planning Association. An undercurrent theme is an attempt to form an Anglo-American postwar planning association. Material includes texts of the Elmhirsts' lectures on the War and British agriculture and life in wartime.

Editorial Publications correspondence records the Elmhirsts' involvement with the editors in chief and contributing writers of The New Republic magazine from 1925. This material includes extensive correspondence (1929-1974) through the period of the New Deal and World War II with chief editor Bruce Bliven, treasurer Daniel Mebane, and contributing editors and writers including George Soule, Stark Young and Edmund Wilson. There is also extensive correspondence with Louis D Froelick and Richard Walsh, editors of ASIA magazine (and letters of Pearl S Buck, Walsh's wife). Other editors represented include Homer Eaton Keyes of the Magazine Antiques; Edith J R Isaacs and Ashley Dukes of Theatre Arts Monthly.

Foundation and society records include correspondence with Edward Meade Earle of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, often concerning the National Economic and Social Planning Association (NESPA) and its successor, the National Planning Association. There are also two folders of correspondence with NPA associates including Bjarne Braatoy and E Johnston Coil.

Leonard Elmhirst's association with America began in 1920 with his enrolment at Cornell University. His marriage to Dorothy Straight in 1925 led to new connections in America, in agricultural economics and planning, through his association with Tagore, and through his co-operative role with Dorothy in administering her American holdings. Dorothy Elmhirst's influence may have opened many doors for Leonard, but he opened just as many for himself.

Dorothy and Willard Straight backed The New Republic magazine when it was founded by Herbert Croly in 1914. Dorothy Elmhirst funded the annual operating deficits of The New Republic for almost 40 years. ASIA was added in 1918, and The Magazine Antiques, somewhat later. Theatre Arts Monthly seems to have been outside the direct control of Editorial Publications. In 1934, the Elmhirsts started a process of consolidating the operations of these magazines, hiring William Lescaze to remodel a suite of offices to house them. A New York corporation, Editorial Publications Inc, owned by the Straight Improvement Corporation, was established to centralise financial controls and administration. Before her second marriage, Dorothy Straight had attended weekly editorial meetings of the New Republic. After 1925, she seems not to have had direct editorial influence, but she and Leonard required monthly lists of' 'current projects' from both Bruce Bliven and Richard Walsh. In 1941 Dorothy's son Michael Straight became Washington editor of The New Republic, and ASIA and Theatre Arts were made independent at about that time.

Following World War II, The New Republic remained under the administration of chief editor Bruce Bliven and Michael Straight who served as editor and subsequently as publisher. The magazine's offices were moved to Washington DC, and its holding company was reorganised as Straight Enterprises Inc about 1950.

Bruce Bliven retired in 1953 but maintained a lifelong correspondence with Leonard Elmhirst.

Information for Researchers

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