Charlotte Seitlin papers
Scope and Contents
The Charlotte Seitlin Papers consist of 1 linear ft. and include some biographical materials and correspondence with friends, clients, and colleagues. Themes include lesbian and gay lifestyles, circa 1940s-1970s.
Seitlin's papers primarily pertain to her professional life as a freelance editor in the 1970s after her 1971 retirement from Simon and Schuster, after which the firm discarded decades of her professional files. Notable correspondents include Kay Boyle, Uta Hagen, June Havoc, Janet Flanner, Mercedes de Acosta, Nolan Miller, and May Sarton. Her professional correspondence frequently blurs with the personal, as her relationships with a number of her clients and colleagues developed into friendships.
Dates of Materials
- Creation: 1938-1979
Creator
- Seitlin, Charlotte (Person)
Language of Materials
English
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open for research use without restriction beyond the standard terms and conditions of Smith College Special Collections.
Conditions Governing Use
The Sophia Smith Collection owns copyright to Charlotte Seitlin's unpublished works; however, copyright in other items in this collection may be held by their respective creators. For reproductions of materials that are governed by fair use as defined under U. S. Copyright Law, no permission to cite or publish is required. For instances which may regard materials in the collection not created by Seitlin, researchers are responsible for determining who may hold materials' copyrights and obtaining approval from them. Researchers do not need anything further from Smith College Special Collections to move forward with their use.
Biographical / Historical
Born August 16, 1906 in Trenton, New Jersey, to Myron and Flora (Smith) Seitlin, Charlotte Seitlin graduated from Trenton High School in 1924 and from the New Jersey College for Women (later Douglass College, now part of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey) in 1928. Upon graduation, Seitlin went to work at Simon and Schuster in New York City, a publishing firm founded in 1924. By the time the firm forced her into retirement in 1971, Seitlin had risen to senior executive editor, specializing in entertainment memoirs and travel. Some of the figures she worked with over the years on their memoirs and other books include Erté, Sam Levenson, Rocky Graziano, June Havoc and June's better-known sister, Gypsy Rose Lee. Known as "Chatzie" to her family and friends, who included such literary greats as May Sarton, Janet Flanner, and Kay Boyle, Seitlin never married. After her retirement from Simon and Schuster, she worked as a freelance editor in New York and Connecticut, with occasional trips to Barbados, until her health declined severely in the spring of 1979. She died of a brain tumor in June of that year.
Extent
0.875 linear feet (2 containers)
Abstract
Editor for Simon and Schuster, circa 1928-71, specializing in books about ballet and memoirs. Some of the authors she worked with over the years included Janet Flanner, Sam Levenson, Rocky Graziano, and June Havoc and June's better-known sister, Gypsy Rose Lee. Known as "Chatzie" to her family and friends, which included literary greats such as May Sarton and Kay Boyle. Her papers include biographical materials and correspondence with friends and colleagues. Notable correspondents include Kay Boyle, Uta Hagen, June Havoc, Janet Flanner, Nolan Miller, and May Sarton. Themes include lesbian and gay lifestyles, circa 1950-1970s.
Arrangement
This collection is organized into three series:
- I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS
- II. PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
- III. CORRESPONDENCE
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Laura Kaye donated the Charlotte Seitlin Papers to the Sophia Smith Collection in 2012.
Processing Information
Processed by Adrienne Marie Naylor, intern, August 2012
Subject
- Agress, Lynne, 1941- (Person)
- Bricktop [born Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith], 1894-1984 (Person)
- de Acosta, Mercedes,1893-1968 (Person)
- Hagen, Uta, 1919-2004 (Person)
- Miller, Nolan, 1907-2006 (Person)
- Seitlin, Charlotte (Person)
- Acosta, Mercedes de,1893-1968 (Person)
- Flanner, Janet, 1892- (Person)
- Havoc, June (Person)
- Murray, Natalia Danesi (Person)
- Boyle, Kay, 1902-1992 (Person)
- Sarton, May, 1912-1995 (Person)
- Title
- Charlotte Seitlin papers
- Subtitle
- Finding Aid
- Author
- Finding aid prepared by Adrienne Marie Naylor, intern.
- Date
- 2012
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Revision Statements
- 07/26/2017: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)
- 2017-07-26T17:48:21-04:00: This record was migrated from InMagic DB Textworks to ArchivesSpace.
Repository Details
Part of the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History Repository
