Series V. Birth Press/Vanity Press, 1874, 1890, 1948-2008, undated, inclusive; 1950-1985, bulk

This series contains material generated by Birth Press (sometimes referred to as Vanity Press), a small publishing company started in the 1950s by Tuli Kupferberg and Sylvia Topp, in which publications were assembled in their apartment, then distributed to local bookstores or sold on the street. The 50+ works published over the years through Birth Press were a collaborative effort, with Kupferberg as primary writer and Topp as editor and designer. This series contains working files for these works, including edited manuscripts; source material; photographs/illustrations; and layout plates/negatives. Many of their publications, including their first title, Birth featured works by Allen Ginsberg, Diane Di Prima, LeRoi Jones, and others in and around the Beat scene, as well as the first published work of Ted Joans. This series also contains a notable collection of original children's drawings and writings, as well as general research, gathered for use in their magazine Swing, as well as in their books, As They Were (1973), and As They Were Too (1979). Layout pages, photographs, correspondence, and planning files for First Glance: Childhood Creations of the Famous can also be found in this series. Correspondence related to Birth Press from the 1950s through the late 1990s illustrates the personalities of their readership and popularity of their publications within their lower-Manhattan neighborhood, as well as on a national and international level, seen in the volume of comments and requests for subscriptions and individual publications found in these files. The correspondence files also include submissions and interactions with writers/contributors for publications Birth, Swing, and Yeah.