Correspondence with Katherine Anne Porter, 1941-1947

This series contains twenty-seven letters, four telegrams, and four cards exchanged by Katherine Anne Porter and Herbert Schaumann. Twenty-three are Porter's letters to Schaumann. Four are Schaumann's letters to Porter. The four telegrams and four cards card are from Porter to Schaumann. All of Porter's letters are original. Two of Schaumann's letters are carbon copies. The collection also contains some newspaper clippings and notes made by Schaumann. In the correspondence, Porter and Schaumann discuss World War II, including their distaste for Germans (despite Schaumann's ethnic background) and the Japanese, and two letters specifically address the first atomic bomb.

Other topics include Porter's career in screenwriting, her dissatisfaction with the film industry, her various residences in California, and writing. Poems by Schaumann are listed in one letter dated October 29, 1945.

Many of the letters concern personal life and, specifically, the development and, finally, the abrupt ending of Schaumann and Porter's romantic involvement. The last letter in the series is written by Schaumann and is addressed to Porter but was never sent. According to this letter (dated February 6, 1947), Porter requested that he return the letters she sent to him. Therefore, some of her original letters to Schaumann, as well as some from Schaumann to Porter, are in the Papers of Katherine Anne Porter. Porter prepared some of her side of this correspondence for possible publication under the proposed title, "Letters to a Stranger"; however, the project was never completed. On the envelope of his final unsent letter to Porter, Schaumann jotted some phrases Porter used to describe her negative reaction to Schaumann's revelation of his homosexuality.

Among some of the notable persons mentioned in the collection are Thomas Mann, Edith Sitwell, Robert Penn Warren, Hart Crane, and Porter's nephew Paul Porter.

The letters, telegrams, and note card are arranged chronologically.