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University of Texas at Austin

Adeline Lubell-Naiman:

A Preliminary Inventory of Her Collection of Norman Mailer at the Harry Ransom Center

Creator: Lubell-Naiman, Adeline
Title: Adeline Lubell-Naiman Collection of Norman Mailer
Dates: 1946-1996
Extent: 1 box (.21 linear feet)
Abstract: This brief collection description is an accession record. The collection is not fully processed or cataloged; no creator’s sketch, descriptions of series, or indexes are available.
Call Number: Manuscript Collection MS-05081
Language: English
Access: Open for research


Administrative Information


Acquisition: Gift and purchase, 2007 (G12560, R16544)
Processed by: Katy Hill, Stephen Mielke, 2007
Repository:

Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Scope and Contents


Adeline Lubell-Naiman was a close friend of the Mailer family for over sixty years. She attended Radcliffe with Norman Mailer's sister, Barbara, and was a good friend of Mailer's first wife Beatrice Silverman. In 1946, while working as an editor at Little, Brown and Company, she convinced Mailer to submit the first 200 pages of the manuscript of The Naked and the Dead and championed it to her publisher. She suggested that historian and critic Bernard DeVoto read the manuscript and give his opinion on whether Little, Brown should publish it. He recommended not publishing and the novel was submitted to Rinehart, which published the book in 1948. Lubell-Naiman remained close friends with Mailer and his wives over the years and during the summer of 1968 she played the role of a president of a women's college in his film Maidstone.
Lubell-Naiman's Norman Mailer collection consists of three folders: Works and writings, Correspondence, and Clippings. The Works folder contains a six-page typed transcript of Mailer's speech at the University of California, Berkeley on May 21, 1965; a copy of a one-page typed sheet titled "Notes on Maidstone" from Norman Mailer; and seventeen pages of Lubell-Naiman's handwritten notes on the making of Maidstone, July 18-24, 1968.
The correspondence folder contains eighteen carbon copies of Lubell-Naiman letters to Mailer, dating from 1948 to 1972, and fourteen letters from Mailer to Lubell-Naiman, dating from 1962 to 1996. Several of Mailer's letters are substantial and spell out Mailer's views on various literary and personal matters. Also present is one 1976 letter to Leonard Fine copied to Lubell-Naiman, and three letters to Lubell-Naiman from Mailer's secretary, dating from 1965 to 1971. In addition there is correspondence dealing with the submission of The Naked and the Dead to Little, Brown and Company, including a letter from Mailer to editor Angus Cameron, several letters from Lubell-Naiman, and Bernard DeVoto's evaluation of the novel.
The bulk of the clippings folder relates to the making of Maidstone, but does include some other clippings on Mailer.

Related Material


Norman Mailer Papers. The University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Center

Adeline Lubell-Naiman Collection of Norman Mailer--Folder List