The Richard Yates collection primarily consists of manuscripts; some correspondence and printed items are also present.

Manuscripts for books by Yates in the collection (all of which exist in multiple drafts and versions) include eleven short stories, written between 1947 and the 1960s (two were published, in Cosmopolitan and Transatlantic Review); Revolutionary Road (Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1961); the short stories that compose Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, separately and as a the complete book (Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1962); Disturbing the Peace (Delacorte, 1975); The Easter Parade (Delacorte, 1976); A Good School (Delacorte, 1978); seven stories from the collection Liars In Love (Delcorte, 1981); Young Hearts Crying (Delacorte, 1984); a screenplay adaptation of William Styron's Lie Down in Darkness (1985); Cold Spring Harbor (Delacorte, 1986); a script proposal titled The World on Fire (1989); and Uncertain Times (an unfinished novel).

Other items in the collection consist of a contract for Revolutionary Road dated July 19, 1960; several letters from Yates to various individuals (1967-1992), including many to Geoffrey Clark and Henry DeWitt; an interview with Yates; and a cassette recording of an interview with Yates (1971).

There are some authors who enjoy critical acclaim but for whatever reason do not make the leap to popular success. One such writer was Richard Yates (1926 - 1992) whose work was championed by such diverse individuals as Tennessee Williams, William Styron, Dorothy Parker and Kurt Vonnegut. His first of his seven published novels, Revolutionary Road (Atlantic/Little, Brown, 1961), earned praise as a masterpiece of realism, garnered a nomination for the National Book Award, and sold a respectable ten thousand copies. He followed up with an equally well-received collection of short stories, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (Atlantic/Little, Brown, 1962), but the general public did not seem to want to read his work, which some deemed too depressing. The perceived failure of his work, coupled with bouts of alcoholism and mental illness that plagued him in his adult life, consigned Yates to the margins of literary circles.

Born on February 2, 1926 in Yonkers, New York, Richard Walden Yates was the son of Vincent Matthew Yates and his wife, the former Ruth Maurier. His father had studied to be a concert singer but ended up working as a salesman for General Electric, while his mother, following her 1929 divorce, attempted to support her two children (Yates and his sister) with an unsuccessful career as a sculptor. He was raised in Manhattan, Scarsdale and Cold Spring Harbor. After securing a scholarship, Yates attended Avon Old Farms School, a boarding facility in Connecticut. By his junior year, he was editing the school newspaper. Graduating in 1944, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and served as an infantryman in Belgium and France, where he was a participant in the Battle of the Bulge, during which he contracted pleurisy. Refusing medical attention, he continued to fight until he collapsed; the incident left his lungs in a weakened condition for the rest of his life.

Returning to the United States in 1946, Yates settled in Greenwich Village and attempted to live a bohemian life while pursuing a writing career. Two years later at a party, he met Sheila Bryant, whom he would marry a few months later. Tensions arose fairly early in the marriage, though, when Yates was fired from his job at the United Press and his pregnant wife was forced to accept a secretarial position to support them. Shortly after the birth of his first daughter, Sharon, Yates contracted tuberculosis and spent almost two years in treatment at a veterans’ hospital. Using his recovery time to read and learn – he later referred to the period as his “college education” – he began to formulate the story for what would become his first novel.

Once discharged, Yates received a disability pension and he moved to Europe for a few years where he began his literary endeavors in earnest. He sold eight short stories to various publications, including “Jody Rolled the Bones” to The Atlantic Monthly, which earned a prize from the magazine and attracted the attention of Seymour Lawrence, who would later become his editor. In 1956, Yates submitted a partial draft for a novel which some of the editors felt was too derivative of Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Still, with Lawrence’s encouragement, Yates reworked the material and numerous drafts later, the novel was published in 1961 as Revolutionary Road . By this time, though, his marriage had ended.

With the publication of an anthology of his short stories, Yates appeared to be on his way to a substantial literary career. His stories, many of which depicted the extent of self-deception in which individuals indulge, were well-written and marked him as a potent observer of postwar American life. But audiences found his themes of disillusionment and failure to be perhaps too close to home. Instead of embracing his work, the general public remained indifferent.

Like some writers, including his idol F. Scott Fitzgerald, Yates tried his hand in Hollywood. He was hired to adapt William Styron’s novel Lie Down in Darkness for the director John Frankenheimer, but like many films, the project fell through. Yates then accepted a post as a speech writer for Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, although he bristled somewhat at the idea of being a writer for hire.

In 1964, Yates was invited to join the teaching faculty at the University of Iowa’s famed Writers’ Workshop. Despite his alcoholism, he proved to be an excellent instructor, but the strain of the job affected his writing and his second semi-autobiographical novel, A Special Providence (Knopf, 1969), suffered. It was both a critical and financial failure, although Yates looked upon the experience as a chance for learning. He had also embarked on a second marriage to the former Martha Speer in 1968.

Despite numerous personal setbacks over the next several years, Yates continued writing. In 1971, he was denied tenure at Iowa and for the remainder of his life had to scrounge to find teaching positions. Word of his heavy drinking and his precarious mental health adversely affected his teaching career. Suffering from bipolar disease (then called “manic depression”), Yates often suffered emotional breakdowns during stressful moments. This took a toll on his marriage and in 1975, he and Speer divorced.

Still, he managed to produce fiction, including his third novel Disturbing the Peace (Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence, 1975), which was followed in fairly quick succession by The Easter Parade (Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence, 1976) and the autobiographical A Good School (Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence, 1978). A second anthology of short stories, Liars in Love (Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence), was published in 1981.

Yates, who often has been referred to as a chronicler of disappointed lives, managed to write two more novels for publication, Young Hearts Crying (Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence, 1984) and Cold Springs Harbor (Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence, 1986) before his death at age 66 on November 7, 1992 in Birmingham, Alabama following minor surgery. At the time of his passing, he was working on a novel about the Kennedy administration entitled Uncertain Times .