Andrew Coburn Papers
In taut and haunting prose, Andrew Coburn left a memorable impression as both novelist and journalist. Born in Exeter, N.H., on May 1, 1932, Coburn became serious about writing while fulfilling his military duty in Germany and earning a degree in English at Suffolk University. After landing a position with the local newspaper, the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, he put his talents to good use. Building his career as a journalist covering organized crime by day, he managed to spend nearly every night writing fiction until dawn. His successes on the beat earned him steady promotions all the way to city editor, and he eventually founded two newspapers of his own, though fiction would be his future. Winning a Eugene Saxton Fellowship in 1965, Coburn drew upon his experiences on the streets of Lawrence to publish his first novel, The Trespassers, in 1974, followed by The Babysitter in 1979, and eventually eleven other novels, a novella, and a host of short stories and essays. A master of language and dialogue grounded in a strong sense of place, Coburn won both wide readership and praise from other writers. His work has garnered nominations for the Edgar Allan Poe Award and Pushcart Prize and has been translated into 14 languages. Three of his novels have been made into films in France. He was married to Bernadine Casey Coburn, a former journalist and public relations expert, with whom he had one son and four daughters.
The Coburn Papers contain working drafts and page proofs of Andrew Coburn’s novels and short stories, along with selected correspondence, and dozens of journals, scrapbooks, and notebooks used in his fiction. In many cases, the completeness of the collection makes it possible to follow a work from its earliest inception, often recorded as a sketch (literal or in prose), through to its final iteration.
Background on 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 Eagle-Tribune in North Andover, Mass.
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 Tribune, he was promoted
up the ranks to city editor, garnering a United Press Award in 1967 and an
Associated Press Award in 1968 for his work there. After this, Coburn spent five
years as a copy-editor and literary critic for the Boston
Globe, from 1973 to 1978, and eventually founded two newspapers of his
own: The Journal of Greater Lawrence and Greater Lawrence Today. From 1978 to 1981 he was a
political columnist for several Massachusetts newspapers, until he committed to
working on his fiction full-time. Coburn’s investigative work on organized crime in the greater Boston area was so
thorough that at one point there was reportedly a contract out on his life. Coburn
was concerned enough by this that he purchased a gun for self-defense, although he
admitted in an interview that he didn’t know anything about guns and was so afraid
one of his daughters would find it that he hid the gun in the house and kept the
ammunition in the trunk of his car.
Coburn began to publish his short fiction in newspapers and journals in the early
1960s. His stories were published in the Transatlantic
Review, Short Stories Today, and the
Lawrence Eagle-Tribune. In 1965 he was awarded the
Eugene Saxton Memorial Fellowship for young writers in order to finish his first novella, The Cottage. In 1974, Coburn published his first novel, The
Trespassers, inspired by his experiences working for the Eagle-Tribune. It was the beginning of a long and
successful literary career. By 2006, Coburn had published thirteen novels, which
have been translated into fourteen languages around the world. Three of his novels
have been adapted into well-received films in France. Off
Duty (1980) was adapted into Un dimanche de
flic in 1983, Widow’s Walk (1984) into
Noyade interdite in 1987, and Sweetheart (1985) into Toute
peines confondues in 1992.
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–Sweetheart(1985), Love Nest (1987), and
Goldilocks (1989), which was nominated for an
Edgar Award in 1990–and the Bensington Novels–No Way Home
(1992), Voices in the Dark (1994), and
On the Loose (2006). Coburn’s novels are
primarily set in the suburbs, where appearances of civility and normalcy often
conceal dark secrets, moral deviance, and corruption, while decent people struggle,
with mixed success, to hang on to their convictions. Another notable novel of
Coburn’s is Birthright (1998), a fictionalized
retelling of the infamous 1932 kidnapping and murder of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s
infant son. The novel’s premise is that the kidnapped child survived, grows up
unaware of his true identity, and eventually decides to run for president. Birthright was Coburn’s favorite of his own novels, and
he kept more notes and drafts chronicling its creation than for any of
his other works. The working title for Birthright
was “Eagle,” although at one point “Child of Silence” was also considered.
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 Spouses & Other Crimes , which was
published in 2014. Coburn passed away in August of 2018, at the age of 86.
List of published works:
- The Trespassers (1974)
- The Babysitter (1979)
- Off Duty (1980)
- Company Secrets (1982)
- Widow’s Walk (1984)
- Sweetheart (1985)
- Love Nest (1987)
- Goldilocks (1989)
- No Way Home (1992)
- Voices in the Dark (1994)
- Birthright (1998)
- My Father’s Daughter (2003, novella published
in the anthology Men from Boys) - On the Loose (2006)
- Spouses & Other Crimes (2014, short story
collection: Charlie Judd – Bang Bang – Wide World of War – Katie Couric – Mrs.
Comeau – The Christmas Clara Cried – Ginger – George W. Bush – Jocelyn – A Woolf
in Vita’s Clothing – Plum Island)
Contents of Collection
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.
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 Voices in the Dark
(1994), are included, as well as notes for every published novel. Drafts and
notes for four unpublished works are included in this series. These include:
The Cottage or A
Breach of Life (1967), Another
Irishman (1993), Of Three Minds
(2003), and Turtle Soup (2009).
Another Irishman, which came the closest
to publication of the four, was rejected by Coburn’s publisher in favor of
Birthright.
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,
Voices in the Dark. Also included are
four drafts of Coburn’s 2014 short story collection, Spouses & Other Crimes, and several drafts of a much larger
planned short story and essay anthology, entitled Midnight On: A Writer’s
Notebook, which features a substantial selection of his short fiction.
Several of his earlier short stories were published in the literary journal
The Transatlantic Review, of which 3
issues containing Coburn’s writings are included.
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 Toutes peines
confondue (1992), the French film adaptation of Coburn’s novel
Sweetheart, as well as some home-videos
related to Coburn’s family and writing career. The audiocassettes contain
mainly interviews with Coburn and his wife Bernadine Casey Coburn, and the
CDs contain digital copies of Coburn’s short stories.
Correspondence
Correspondence
Correspondence
Boys)
Versions
Versions
Administrative information
Access
The collection is open for research.
Language:
English
Provenance
Acquired from Andrew Coburn, 2016.
Processing Information
Processed by Emma Gronbeck, 2018.
Copyright and Use (More information
)
Cite as: Andrew Coburn Papers (MS 936). Special
Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Libraries.