Beinecke Digitizes Full Collection of Mina Loy Papers
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University has digitized the entirety of their Mina Loy collection. "A detailed description of the archive can be found online here: Guide to the Mina Loy Papers." Included here are drafts of The Last Lunar Baedeker and Insel, untitled watercolors and color sketches, poem fragments and type-written pages, aphorisms, diamonds on heaps of broken glass, and more.
Mina Loy (1882-1966), the modernist poet, painter, playwright, actress, and designer of lampshades, lived in Europe during the height of the Futurist, Dada, and Surrealist movements. Her talent, intellect, and exceptional beauty made her one of the central figures of the literary and artistic avant garde who later gathered around Alfred Stieglitz, Walter Conrad Arensberg, and Alfred Kreymborg in New York. Although Loy was a multi-gifted woman, her fame largely rests with her poetry, which is daring in its technical experimentation and feminist in its exploration of female oppression. Two collections of her poems were published during her lifetime, Lunar Baedecker (Paris: Contact Editions, 1923) and Lunar Baedeker & Time-Tables (Highlands, N.C.: Jargon, 1958); another collection, The Last Lunar Baedeker (Highlands, N.C.: Jargon, 1982), appeared posthumously. The Mina Loy Papers contain prose, poetry, drawings, designs, and copyright inventions documenting the life of modernist poet and artist Mina Loy. The papers span the dates 1914-1960.
Additional materials related to Mina Loy and her work can be found by searching Yale's Finding Aid Database.
Head to Beinecke’s Digital Library: Mina Loy Papers: YCAL MSS 6 to start your research.