George A. Smathers Libraries announces
Gene Baro Collection now available to researchers
The Gene Baro Collection at the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries is now open for research. Eugene Baro (né Baroff, 1919-1983) was an author, editor and critic who studied literature and European history and received undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Florida. While at UF, he developed a close friendship with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and lived for a while at her Cross Creek home. Their correspondence and other items relating to his stint at Cross Creek are an important part of this collection.
Baro left Florida in 1952 to teach at Bennington College in Vermont, where he remained for many years, making trips back and forth to Florida, Europe and especially New York. He befriended and corresponded heavily with many influential authors, editors and creative figures from the art and literary circles of the Post-WWII era. His letters reveal Baro to be a thoughtful, sensitive, humorous, and devoted correspondent and confidant of many.
The Gene Baro Collection is comprised of more than 2,000 separate pieces of correspondence and manuscripts spanning 1950-1983, with the bulk of the collection dating from the 1950’s to mid-1960’s. Besides Rawlings, the archive includes correspondence from more than 80 published authors, some of whom are represented by groups of letters significant in quality and quantity.
The 55 letters from Rawlings are from the period 1949-1953. Baro and Rawlings apparently became acquainted in 1949, at the time she was preparing to donate her manuscripts and literary correspondence to the University of Florida. Baro was curator of the UF Libraries Creative Writing Collection. The bulk of the letters were written from Van Hornesville, NY, where Rawlings spent the summers during the last years of her life. Other letters are written from Cross Creek, Crescent Beach, and Gainesville, Florida, Richmond, Virginia and from New York City, when Rawlings was hospitalized.
Rawlings was engaged in the writing of her final book, The Sojourner, during the period in which the letters were written. The writing and revision of the novel is one of the major topics of the correspondence. Other topics include the donation of her papers to the University of Florida, her daily experiences in Van Hornesville and elsewhere, including her domestic life and a succession of domestic helpers, visits to and from poet Robert Frost, contact with the Owen Young family and other Van Hornesville neighbors, contacts with the dancer Pearl Primus, and friends such as Julia Scribner Bigham and Bee McNeill. Rawlings had several illnesses during the period covered, which she discusses in the letters. Her husband, Norton Baskin, who remained in Florida during the summers, except for short visits to New York, is frequently discussed. She often discusses her current reading and other writers. The author most frequently referred to is probably Marcel Proust. Letters from Richmond concern her research as the authorized biographer of friend and novelist Ellen Glasgow.
Rawlings was concerned with the progress of her friend Gene Baro as an aspiring writer and a good part of the letters concerns his personal well being and that of his friend, Albert Stadler, an artist who painted the first portrait of Rawlings.
Of note are detailed correspondence from New Yorker editor Howard Moss, poet/author/editor/professor Robert O. Bowen, experimental filmmaker Maya Deren, authors Lillian Smith and Marguerite Young, to name a few. Of local and UF interest is an extensive archive of correspondence from Stanley West, director of the University of Florida Libraries from 1947-1967, mostly regarding the establishment of the Creative Writing Collection, in which Baro was involved. Also of interest from a UF perspective is an archive of correspondence with UF faculty members William Carleton and Clyde Miller, especially in reference to the activities on campus of the Johns’ Committee and their efforts to uncover communists and homosexuals in the Florida academic community. Baro and many of his correspondents were semi-closeted or closeted gay men during a very tumultuous time in American social history, and much of their correspondence reveals sometimes cryptically and sometimes openly the oppression they endured in their personal and professional lives.
Approximately 10 items from Florida author and environmental activist Marjory Stoneman Douglas are included, and they include intimate reflections on her writing and publishing experiences. Also included are letters from author Marianne Hauser, who is also represented in the literary manuscript collection at the University of Florida.
There are some strong links between the Gene Baro Collection and existing collections and collecting interests, especially with regard to the social and literary history of Florida and UF. Besides that, this collection provides generous insight into the efflorescence of Post-WWII literary and artistic culture in New York City and elsewhere.
The strong ties that Baro maintained throughout his life with the University of Florida and with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings contribute significant value to this collection for UF. This archive of his papers will fill in lacunae and shed light on questions that plague historians of Florida and Rawlings scholars.
This collection is open to the public in the Research Room of the Department of Special and Area Studies Collections, 205 Smathers Library. Hours are posted on the home page. If you have questions or wish to make an appointment for research assistance, please contact the collection curator, Florence M. Turcotte at 352-273-2767.
