Library Guides: Special Collections: Literary History: Burke Collection Overview

Burke Collection Overview

The Kenneth Burke papers contain the personal and professional papers of the philosopher of language Kenneth Duva Burke (1897-1993). Spanning over eight decades, from 1906 to 1993, the multifaceted papers illuminate not only the personal and intellectual life of Burke, but also the lives of his correspondents, many of them major twentieth-century figures. There are three sections to the Burke papers, and each covers a different time period of his career.

Burke 1
Burke 1 consists primarily of a correspondence file of letters written to Burke. It also includes a small number of manuscripts.

List of Correspondents in Burke 1
An alphabetical list of the correspondents represented in the
Kenneth Burke papers, Burke-1

Burke 2
In addition to containing the original letters of Burke’s many correspondents, Burke-2 includes interfiled copies of Burke’s own letters, as well as verse, typescripts, photographs, articles, and newspaper clippings.
Burke 3
The Kenneth Burke Papers, (Burke-3), offers a rich source of materials related to Kenneth Burke’s writings from 1915 to 1969. The collection consists primarily of manuscripts, notes, correspondence, reviews, and annotated news clippings. Highlights include Burke’s letters to Malcolm Cowley (1915 to 1929; 1931), early fiction, responses to student writing at Bennington College, speeches, articles, and drafts of "Permanence and Change," "A Grammar of Motives," and "A Rhetoric of Motives," as well as material for "A Rhetoric of Religion."