Steinbeck Archive Project

This project will benefit the Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives at the University of Oklahoma. We will be contributing searchable, plain text versions of letters written to Democratic Congressman (OK) Lyle Boren. These plain text versions will make discovery easier for researchers and the public. The letters concern Congressman Boren's speech before the House of Representatives condemning John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath and its representation of "Okies."

The Plan

We will transcribe each letter into its own document using the rules below.

1. Read each of the following steps and those in the section below
2. Grab a letter
3. Open our shared Drive folder here
4. Create a new file in the above folder
5. Name the file (without quotes): "CAC_CC_007_2_6_49_0###" and replace the last three numbers (#) with the page numbers of the document you are transcribing, e.g. Pages 14–15 are "CAC_CC_007_2_6_49_0014–15". Note that there should be four digits (e.g. 0004 or 0135) before the hyphen

Transcription

Transcribe exactly as written, including apparent misspellings.

My sentiments exactly and good for you! The bas taste left in my mouth from reading

Transcribe complete document as a single column, regardless of original layout

Spaces and line-breaks should be replicated, but numerous blank lines should be transcribed as a single blank line.

Congressman Boren's stationery header

LYLE H. BOREN
4th OKLAHOMA DISTRICT

HOME ADDRESS:
SEMINOLE, OKLAHOMA

Replace Illegible Text with [[?]]

If anything is illegible, ask a friend. If neither can read it, replace the word with [[?]], including the square brackets.

Partial letter to Congressman Boren regarding The Grapes of Wrath, illegible

Will you please [[?]] [[?]] tell you how much I appreciate your

Use Caret to Indicate Marginalia

If there is marginalia on the document, the following should be placed in the text: ^ [[Insert text of marginalia here]] including square brackets and caret.

Partial letter to Congressman Boren regarding The Grapes of Wrath, with marginalia

. . . Not 10% of them were being farmed by the mortgagors. I still had a few when the AAA took effect, and tenants - no Sharecroppers, thank you- were encouraged to comply, if that was their inclination. ^ [[I opposed Farm Bill & offered substitute]] Some small

Use [[signature]] to Indicate Signature

Signature on letter to Congressman Boren

Very sincerely,
[[signature]]
Mrs. L. E. Ruble
County Vice-Chairman

Use [[blank verso]] to Indicate Blank Scanned Page

All archived pages are scanned from both sides. To indicate the location of these pages, use [[blank verso]] after the content of the previous letter to show their location.

Use [[page #]] to Indicate New Page

Most documents contain a single page with text and its scanned reverse (verso), so they should look like this at the end of the document: [[page 2]]

[[blank verso]]

Digging Further

The Oklahoman is mentioned throughout "The Reception of The Grapes of Wrath in Oklahoma." Many articles are available on their site:

• 

  Cartoon from the Daily Oklahoman condemning John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath

• 

  Another article from the Daily Oklahoman regarding migrants moving to Oklahoma

• 

  Article from the Daily Oklahoman condemning mechanized farming

• 

  Article from the Daily Oklahoman showing Lions' Club outrage at The Grapes of Wrath

• 

  Article from the Daily Oklahoman recording the number of Californians moving to Oklahoma

On the other hand, the entire run of the Oklahoma City Times is available—on microfilm at The Oklahoma Historical Society. An important consideration in archival work is weighing cost and availability. How do you think this will affect future writings about this event?

File:Election Day 1922.jpg

Letter from Mr. H. Barton Williams mentions an article in The Country Gentleman just before 25 Jan. 1940. Not only is this a common title for novels at the time, but there is a British periodical of the same name, making searches difficult. The Wiki page offers a clue: a series of covers that look very similar to the Saturday Evening Post of the time. Further reading indicates the two publications were released by the same Curtis Publishing Company. A search for that company's archive reveals that the UPenn Libraries hold a collection that may contain the material, but it has not been digitized yet. Interestingly, according to recently (2014) unclassified documents, the Curtis Publishing Company gained the attention of the FBI in the late 60s due to a publication entitled Soviet Life.

NPR article about the book's reception in California (including "book burning" picture!).

Eleanor Roosevelt's response to the novel.

Even Further

Our Digital Archives page contains a large variety of open archives from around the world. In addition to The Oklahoman archive mentioned above, The Beryl Ford Collection at the Tulsa City-County Library contains many midcentury photographs of Tulsa by street. See if you can find your house!