The literary periodical Manuscript, a bimonthly founded by John Rood (1902- 1974), was first published in January 1934 with John Rood, Mary Lawhead, and Flola L. Shepard as editors. Printed at the Lawhead Press in Athens, Ohio (where the editors also published a pamphlet, Manuscript News ), the periodical published eighteen issues. Manuscript took particular interest in the work of new writers and encouraged their submissions without imposing limits on length or format. Among the writers whom it first brought into national print were Irving Shulman, Eudora Welty, and Tennessee Williams. Other authors who appeared in its pages include Erskine Caldwell, Jack Conroy, August Derleth, and James Laughlin. In the mid-1930s John Rood began to devote more time to his sculpture, at which occupation he would spend the rest of his life, and Manuscript ceased publication with the issue of December 1936.
From the guide to the Manuscript (periodical) Records, 1933-1937, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)
