Texas Monthly Magazine

Appendix A: Texas Monthly Staff 1974-1979
Appendix B: Correspondence Index

Series 1: Editorial Files
The Texas Monthly papers are from the Editorial offices, and are divided into two main subseries.

Subseries A: Issue Files (processed June 1974 2/1979, unprocessed 3/1979-ongoing)
Dates: The processed section of this series begins with the September 1974 issue; since each issue was in production approximately 2-3 months before publication, the papers date from about June of that year. This processing project ends with the papers of the February 1979 issue; the papers themselves are on-going.

N.B.: Even though the Issue Files begin with the September 1974 issue, many manuscripts of articles written by Gregory Curtis for the 1973 and 1974 issues are retained in Subseries B: Editors' Files: Curtis: 1973 and 1974. The papers retained for the issues from 1974 and much of 1975 are incomplete.

Each issue's papers are divided into two sections: the manuscript papers and the proofs. Both are organized to follow the set-up of the Table of Contents of the magazine itself, i.e., "Features," then "Departments," then "Miscellany". Apparently there was a "Briar Patch" section at the beginning of the magazine's publication. By the September 1974 issue, this had disappeared; from descriptions, we surmise that this was replaced by the "Texas Monthly Reporter". For one year (June 1977-June 1978) there was an additional section, "Short Subjects", which consisted of the "Texas Monthly Reporter" and "Texas Monthly Review". The "Review" consisted of shorter versions of the Review part of "Departments". It appears that the manuscripts and most galleys were not retained for these reviews. Those found have been noted on the inventory list.

The "Manuscript" half of each issue's papers contains the drafts of manuscripts. Draft formats include typescripts, photocopies, and paste-ups. Typically, a mark-up and paste-up of original manuscript pages will be combined with re-types; there are always editorial remarks throughout the manuscript. When there are earlier drafts, these are identified on the inventory; also occasionally there are notes to or from the author; these are likewise identified. One copy of each retained manuscript is marked for the printer; rarely is this a specifically re-typed version.

Not all manuscripts which were generated appear in the archives. However, Features' manuscripts were almost always found. Departments' manuscripts were almost always found, until the review part of Departments became "Review". After this, only copies of "non-review" departments were retained. Some reviews were retained in the "legal" folder (sometimes there would be only the first page saved there); sometimes there were only page proofs; sometimes even these were not found. Occasionally, photographs were found in the fact-check files; these are always noted on the inventory list.

The Miscellany section of the manuscripts contains regular columns such as Contents, "Behind the Lines" (Editor's column), "Inside Story" (Gregory Curtis' column, beginning with the March 1978 issue), "Roar of the Crowd" (Letters to the Editor), "Touts", "Around the State", "Contest" (discontinued in October 1978) and "State Secrets" (added in October 1978), as well as "Texas Monthly Reporter" (except for the year it was included in Short Subjects). Occasionally, actual letters were retained; these are noted on the inventory. Likewise, occasionally, actual entries were retained (in the fact-check file) for the Contest; these are also noted on the inventory.

Filed with the manuscript when available (and indicated on the inventory) is information from the fact-check/research files. These range from a few notes by the research staff to complete Paige boxes of author's notes and reference materials, which include such formats as hand-written interviews and other notes, cassette tapes of interviews, clippings, movie publicity, promotional brochures, restaurant menus, photographs, drawings, articles from magazines, complete issues of other magazines, sales brochures for a variety of products, photocopies of legal documents.

The second section of each issue file is comprised of the various types of proofs: galleys, page proofs and slicks. Galleys present the text in columnar format, the first step toward their final printed format. Page proofs typically follow galleys, with the corrected text laid out for printing, leaving appropriate spaces for graphics. Sometimes page proofs went straight from the original galley run, especially for Departments. Most features had at least one revised galley; some had as many as three before going to page proofs. Finally, slicks are made from corrected page proofs, and used by the press to create the pages. Slicks are so called because they are glued on the back, so that they can be wet down and pasted onto boards, becoming "camera ready" for the press.

The galleys are a particularly rich section of the papers, with many staff and editorial comments, both about the article and between commentators. Broyles, Burka, and Curtis all were active editors; Broyles' comments in particular reveal the editorial attitudes of the magazine. When author's notes and/or editor's notes were found on galleys, these were retained as well as the Master copy of each run.

For both galleys and page proofs, drafts are arranged in a top-to-bottom order, with the final version on top and previous versions below.