Jerome David Salinger was infamously reclusive, and there are few known facts about his life. He was born on January 1, 1919, to an upper-middle–class family in New York City. His Jewish father, Sol, worked as an importer of ham. His mother, Miriam (born Marie Jillich), was of Scotch-Irish descent. His one sister, Doris, was eight years his senior. As a child, Salinger attended schools near his home in Manhattan. In 1932 he was enrolled in the McBurney School, a private institution that he attended for one year before being dismissed for poor grades. He was then enrolled in Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1936. He was social and active at Valley Forge, participating in clubs and school organizations and serving as editor of the school’s yearbook. He began writing short stories during his years at Valley Forge, and expressed interest in one day selling his work to Hollywood.
The years immediately following Salinger’s graduation are not well documented. He attended a summer session at New York University in 1937. He also lived briefly in Vienna and Poland to improve his German language skills and to learn about the ham importing business, in preparation to join his father in the trade. In the fall of 1938, Salinger enrolled in Ursinis College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, but he quit school mid-year and returned to New York City. In 1939, he attended Whit Burnett’s short-story writing seminar at Columbia University. Salinger’s first published story,
In 1942, Salinger was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II. He participated in five European campaigns during the war, including the D-Day invasion of Normandy, before being discharged in 1945. While in Europe, he met and married a French doctor named Sylvia. They divorced in 1946.
Salinger continued to write and publish stories during the war and in the two decades following. On December 22, 1945, the first story to feature his most famous character, Holden Caulfield, was published in
Salinger’s early dream to have his work translated to film was realized in 1950 when the Samuel Goldwyn studios released the motion picture
Salinger’s most celebrated work, his novel
Salinger followed
Few other details are known about Salinger’s life. In 1955, he married Claire Douglas, a London-born, Radcliffe graduate who had settled in Cornish. They had a daughter, Margaret Ann, in 1955, and a son, Matthew, in 1960 before they divorced in 1967. Although Salinger reportedly continued to write, he published no new material. Salinger died on January 27, 2010.
French, Warren.
Grunwald, Anatole, ed.
Hamilton, Ian.
Lundquist, James.
Miller, James E., Jr.
Starosciak, Kenneth.
Sublette, Jack R.
The J. D. Salinger Collection, circa 1940-1982, consists largely of manuscripts, galleys, and page proofs of works by Salinger (both published and unpublished), and correspondence. Portions of this collection were previously accessible through a card catalog but have been re-cataloged as part of a retrospective conversion project. The collection is arranged in two series: Works, circa 1941-1963 (1 box) and Correspondence, 1940-1982 (1 box).
The Works series includes manuscripts of some of Salinger’s short stories, many of which are corrected by hand, and proofs of his books. Manuscript fragments are available for the short story
The collection also includes page proofs of
Much of the Correspondence series consists of letters written by Salinger to his long-time friends Elizabeth Murray and Ruth Maier. This correspondence spans from 1940 to 1982 and covers such topics as Salinger’s writing and the publication of his works, the break-up of his first marriage, their children, and his relationship with Oona O’Neill, daughter of Eugene O’Neill and the fourth wife of Charlie Chaplin. This series also includes letters to and from Cris Maier, to Elizabeth Murray’s daughter, Gloria Murray, and a small batch of correspondence between Salinger and New York bookseller Andreas Brown of Gotham Book Mart.
Most of this collection, including the manuscripts of
This collection offers material for critical, biographical, and textual studies of Salinger and his works. Especially important and rare are the manuscripts of previously unknown and unpublished stories and the extensive personal correspondence to Elizabeth Murray.
Purchases and gift, 1968-2013 (R3852, R4113, R12087, G8737, 2010-04-003-G, 2013-10-17-P)
Open for research
Megan Barnard, 2007; 2014
Other collections at the Ransom Center containing materials related to J. D. Salinger
include:
The Ransom Center also holds a large selection of books by and about J. D. Salinger.