Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

Collection is open to research. Photocopying is restricted except by written permission of Mr. Casey.

Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Papers of John Casey, Accession #10973, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

This collection was loaned to the library on August 22, 1990.

Scope and Content

This collection consists of the papers of American writer John Dudley Casey(1939-), 7.5 linear feet, ca. 1700 items, 22 Hollinger boxes, 1939-1990, containing John Casey's juvenilia; correspondence; manuscripts of his magazine articles and book reviews; manuscripts of his short stories and novellas; manuscripts of his novels, An American Romance, Everyman's Dream, Monticello and People's Drug Store, Spartina, and Testimony and Demeanor; and cassette tapes of his interviews and readings.

Casey was educated at Harvard College (B.A. cum laude 1962), Harvard Law School (L.L.B. 1965), and the University of Iowa (M.F.A. 1968). He has taught at the University of Iowa Law School, the University of Rhode Island, Randolph-Macon Women's College, and the University of Virginia. Casey's awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship (1979-1980), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1982), the O. Henry Award (1988), and the National Book Award (1989). Casey's published works include the books An American Romance (1977), Testimony and Demeanor (1979), and Spartina (1989); short stories in The New Yorker (1968-1988), Chicago Magazine (1983), Ploughshares (1981), Redbook (1972), and Sports Illustrated (1969); book reviews; and magazine articles.

The collection is organized into five series: topical and miscellaneous personal papers, including autobiographical materials, juvenilia, college essays and other work, teaching notes and evaluations, and students' stories; correspondence, separated by subject and correspondent, with separate folders for more widely-known writers, and including alphabetized miscellaneous letters; manuscripts of book reviews and magazine articles, short stories, and novels; sound recordings of Casey's readings and interviews; and two items, a manuscript of the story "A Political Primer" and an author's proof of the story "Avid," in oversize folders.

The organization of the collection groups the novella "A Year in Mid-Air" ( Redbook , 1972) with the short stories, and the story collection Testimony and Demeanor (1979) with the novels.