Sterling Lord Papers
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Abstract
Sterling Lord founded the Sterling Lord Agency in 1952 (later to become Sterling Lord Literistic). He worked with well-known writers, such as Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Anne Sexton, and the Berenstains. This collection contains Lord's professional papers, including financial records, contracts, correspondence, and subject files for the many authors he has worked with. Books and other print material represented by Sterling Lord are also included.
Biographical Note
Sterling Lord (1920-2022) was born in Burlington, Iowa in 1920. He had an interest in tennis from a young age, and in high school became involved in sports journalism, calling in tennis scores to the local newspapers, and writing for his school newspaper. Lord's passion for tennis brought him to Grinnell College in Iowa. After college, he was drafted into the army, where he studied electronics and radar before being transferred to Europe. At the end of WWII, Lord started working for the European edition of "Stars and Stripes", an army publication. There he became the editor for "Weekend", a weekly magazine, which was shortly thereafter shut down by the army. Lord and Richard Evan Jones, the editor in chief, continued printing the magazine as a private enterprise, with offices in Frankfurt and, eventually, in Paris, where Lord met his wife, artist Dodie Yencesse. When "Weekend" folded in the late 1940's, Lord moved to New York City.
During his first two years in New York, Lord worked as an editor for three different magazines. Deciding that that the magazine industry was too unstable, Lord opened up a literary agency with partner Stanley Colbert in 1952. After a couple of years, Colbert left the agency and in 1954 it became the Sterling Lord Agency. During the early years of the agency, Lord mostly managed non-fiction and ghost writers, such as Charlie Samuels, John Keats, Rowland Barker and Al Hirshberg. That was also the period when he met, and started working with, Jack Kerouac. The agency grew quickly as Lord and the authors he published made names for themselves.
In 1987, Sterling Lord Agency merged with the firm Literistic, and has since continued to serve the literary community. Throughout the years, the Sterling Lord Literistic Agency has managed many well known authors such as Terry Southern, David Wise, Jimmy Breslin, Anne Sexton, Erica Jong, the Berenstain family, and many others.
Lord died in Ocala, Florida in 2022 at the age of 102.
Arrangement
This collection is organized into six series: Series I. Subject Files; Series II. Financial, Administrative, and Legal; Series III. Media; Series IV. May 2016 Accretion; Series V. June 2016 Accretions; and Series VI. Print Materials.
Series I, Subseries A: General subject files, is arranged chronologically by year, and alphabetically within each year. The rest of the collection is arranged alphabetically. Series IV and V have not been arranged by an archivist.
Scope and Contents
This collection contains records created by Sterling Lord and the Sterling Lord Literistic Agency, including correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, promotional material, contracts, personnel files, financial records, and books and print material represented by the agency. The bulk of the collection comprises subject files of the authors who were managed by Sterling Lord and others at the agency. The collection covers a brief period of time before Sterling Lord founded the agency, and throughout the agency's operation, up to 2013.
Subjects
People
Conditions Governing Access
Permission of donor's estate is required for access.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright (or related rights to publicity and privacy) for materials in this collection was not transferred to New York University. Permission to use materials must be secured from the copyright holder. Please contact the Fales Library and Special Collections, fales.library@nyu.edu, 212-998-2596.
Preferred Citation
Published citations should take the following form:
Identification of item, date (if known); Sterling Lord Papers; MSS 058; box number; folder number; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.
Location of Materials
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The Sterling Papers were was donated to NYU Libraries by Sterling Lord in two sections, in 1969 and 2010. In May of 2016 Paulina Calistru (on behalf of Sterling Lord) donated an addition to the collection. The accession number associated with this gift is 2016.024.
About this Guide
Processing Information
Books and print material that comprised part of the 2016 accretions were arranged into Series VI.
In February 2019, boxes 448 and 449 were prepared for offsite storage.
In 2024, the Biographical Note and Lord's Name Authority Record were updated to reflect his death date. The Conditions Governing Access note has also been updated to reflect that the responsibility for permission resides with the donor's estate.
