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Andrew Coburn
Andrew Coburn was born on May 1, 1932, in Exeter, N.H., to Andrew Coburn, Sr., and Georgianna Nedeau. As a child, Coburn moved from Exeter to Haverhill, Mass., where he graduated from Haverhill High School in 1950. He joined the U.S. Army in 1951 and was stationed in Frankfurt, West Germany, for three years, attaining the rank of staff sergeant. Upon his return to the U.S., he attended Suffolk University in Boston from 1954 to 1958. At Suffolk, Coburn majored in English with a minor in philosophy and worked as a nightclub waiter, a bank clerk, a tree pruner, and a federal civil servant. After college, Coburn worked at a local bank, a job he quit in 1963 to go back to Germany in hopes of finding a more fulfilling career. He was unsuccessful and eventually returned home, penniless, to his wife and two children, and took a job as a crime reporter for the local Lawrence
This proved to be a turning point, as Coburn would go on to work as a journalist and reporter for many years, primarily investigating organized crime in Massachusetts. During his ten years at the
Coburn began to publish his short fiction in newspapers and journals in the early 1960s. His stories were published in the
Drawing on years of investigative journalism and on his personal experiences with the criminal underbelly of Massachusetts, a haunting realism pervades Coburn’s novels. His tight, elegant prose paints startling portraits of the dark side of suburban America. Organized crime, serial killers, kidnappings, corporate corruption, and unhappy marriages are just some of the subjects of his works. Throughout his writings, it is evident that Coburn was very interested in exploring the domestic side of crime and the banality of evil. Although not always sympathetic, his characters are fascinatingly flawed and highly nuanced, exerting a life of their own.
Of his writing and his subject matter, Coburn has said that during his years as a newsman, his closest friends were criminals, police officers, and trial lawyers, and that he saw in each of these ostensibly different kinds of people something of the others. It was this blurring of the distinction between good and evil, and these common elements of comedy and tragedy, that Coburn wanted to bring to his fiction. He did not consider a character real until they could cast a shadow of their own and do something that he did not expect them to do. He cited some of his favorite authors as Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and Joseph Conrad. Coburn's writing has been compared to works of Alfred Hitchcock, Graham Greene, Dashiell Hammett, and John Updike. In recognition of his literary and journalistic achievements, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters from Merrimack College in 1987.
Among his novels are two series, the Sweetheart Trilogy--
In the creation of his novels, Coburn took extensive notes. He filled dozens of journals with his own writing, as well as newspapers clippings and photographs. News and current events dominate these journals, which also contain research on a variety of other topics. In addition, he kept numerous story and character notes for his novels and short stories, many featuring sketches and drawings of his characters.
Coburn married Bernadine "Bunny" Casey, a former journalist and public relations expert, in 1955 and had one son, Kevin, and four daughters: Cathleen (b. 1955), Krista (b. 1958), Lisa (b. 1960), and Heather (b. 1964). He kept a good deal of correspondence from his wife and children, as well as some of their writings. His eldest daughter, Cathleen, took after her father with her interest in writing, and they corresponded frequently over the years. As Coburn began to age, Cathleen and Bernadine took over most of his correspondence with his literary agent and various publishers concerning his later works, in particular the short story anthology
List of published works:
The Andrew Coburn Papers document the life's work of a Massachusetts journalist and crime fiction author through five decades of journals, scrapbooks, notes, correspondence, story drafts, articles, and publication proofs. The collection offers a rare and invaluable look into the process of one writer's life and career, and in some cases document the creation of a novel from initial idea to finished product. Included are decades of correspondence, both personal and professional; publishing contracts and royalty statements; numerous novel drafts, notes, and page proofs; short story drafts and publication copies; dozens of journals containing handwritten notes, newspaper articles, and magazine clippings; and a collection of audio and videocassettes consisting of interviews and several copies of the French film adaptations of Coburn’s novels.
The collection is open for research.
Acquired from Andrew Coburn, 2016.
Processed by Emma Gronbeck, 2018.
This series is arranged chronologically and contains both professional correspondence related to Coburn's writing and personal correspondence with friends and family. His correspondence with his literary agent, Nikki Smith of Smith/Skolnik Literary Management, documents editing, arrangement, contracts, royalties, and all other aspects of the writing and publishing process. He received many letters from readers over the years, and also corresponded with a variety of publishers, as well as the literary journals, magazines, and newspapers in which he published his short fiction and essays.
This series contains materials related to Coburn’s novels, including typewritten manuscript drafts, edits, page proofs, handwritten notes and drawings, related correspondence, outlines and proposals, and book reviews. Arrangement is chronological by publishing date, with unpublished works filed at the end. Working titles for notes and early drafts are included alongside the final title where applicable. Drafts of every one of his published works, except
This series has been arranged alphabetically by title. Earlier drafts with working titles include the working title following the final title on the folder. Coburn wrote an extensive number of fiction and nonfiction short stories, essays, and articles, at times blending fiction with reality and story with report. Essays and articles written during his time as journalist are interfiled with his short stories due to the difficulty in consistently distinguishing between them.
Although most of Coburn’s short stories stand alone, one of them, "Preacher's Passion" (or "The Chief's Seed"), is a follow-up to Coburn's 1994 novel,
Included in this series are Coburn’s book contracts, contracts for film adaptations of his novels, publishing agreements, book reviews, guidelines and submissions for literary journals and magazines, financial documents such as royalty statements, and other materials related to the publication of Coburn's novels and short stories.
The largest series in the collection, Coburn's journals and notes span from 1951 to 2014 and contain an assortment of newspaper clippings, photographs, notes, story ideas, diary entries, and sketches. His earliest journals, from 1951 to 1954 document his time serving in the United States Army.
This series contains documents, photographs, and publications related to Coburn's personal life and family, including a 1950 yearbook from Haverhill High School and several written interviews.
This series contains a selection of VHS tapes, audiocassettes, and CDs. The VHS tapes include several copies of