William Terry Couch was director of the University of North Carolina Press, 1932-1945; director of the University of Chicago Press, 1945-1950; editor-in-chief of Collier's Encyclopedia and Yearbooks, 1952-1959; editor of the American Oxford Encyclopedia, 1959-1963; and co-director of the Center for American Studies in Burlingame, Calif., 1963-1964. Correspondence, notes, writings, subject files, card files, and photographs documenting Couch's life from 1926 through 1988. Much of the material covers his career in publishing, including his work at university presses during the 1930s and 1940s and his work with encyclopedia companies such as Crowell-Collier Publishing Company and J. J. Little and Ives Company during the 1940s and 1960s. Couch's official press records during the time he was director of the University of North Carolina Press are not included; most of the correspondence during that period is with friends and colleagues. Couch was dismissed in 1950 from his position as director of the University of Chicago Press by Robet M. Hutchins, and there are notes, writings, and correspondence on this controversy and the related issue of academic freedom. From Couch's later years, there are letters from conservative thinkers such as William F. Buckley and Russell Kirk and writings by Couch about his anti-communist sentiments and suport of racial segregation. Other corespondents include Paul Green, Allen Tate, James Feibleman, Josephus Daniels, Jonathan Daniels, Louis Round Wilson, Luther Hodges, Holt McPherson, Cleanth Brooks, David Hoggan, R. J. Rushdoony, F. Maynard Adams, G. Warren Nutter, Daniel Singal, Henry Regnery, and Eliseo Vivas.
