Robert K. Massie Papers
Abstract
The Robert K. Massie Papers, 1940s-2010s, contain manuscript drafts, publisher papers, and other items of journalist, biographer, and historian Robert K. Massie, 1929-2019.
Dates
- Creation: 1940s-2010s
Conditions Governing Access
The physical materials from this collection may be viewed only in the reading room of Vanderbilt’s Special Collections and University Archives. Materials should be requested two to three days in advance to facilitate easier access. Contact specialcollections@vanderbilt.edu to schedule an appointment.
Biographical / Historical
Robert Kinloch Massie (1929-2019), son of Robert Massie, Sr. and Molly Kimball Massie Todd, was born on 5 January 1929 in Versailles, Kentucky. He earned degrees in American studies from Yale and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Interested in the sea, Massie enlisted in the Navy after Oxford and was an officer on an aircraft carrier. Next, he worked as a journalist for The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers’, and Newsweek magazines. He later taught journalism at Princeton and Tulane universities. He was president of The Authors Guild (1987-1991) and worked assiduously for the rights of authors. He wrote pieces for numerous magazines, including Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. His most famous book was Nicholas and Alexandra (1967), about the last Romanov rulers. Massie won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography with Peter the Great: His Life and World (1980). His book Catherine the Great (2011) won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. Massie died in Irvington, NY on 2 December 2019.
Full Extent
96.68 Linear Feet (76 Paige boxes, 4 Hollinger boxes)
Language of Materials
English
Russian
- Title
- Finding Aid for the Robert K. Massie Papers
- Status
- Unprocessed
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the Vanderbilt University Special Collections and University Archives Repository
Special Collections Library
1101 19th Ave. S.
Nashville TN 37212 United States
specialcollections@vanderbilt.edu
About this Site
This site contains collection guides, or finding aids, to the archival collections held by Vanderbilt University Special Collections and University Archives, the History of Medicine Collection, and the Scarritt Bennett Center. Finding aids describe the context, arrangement, and structure of archival materials, allowing users to identify and request materials relevant to their research.
Requesting Materials
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