The Wellington Wales Papers, spanning the years 1940-1966, consist of correspondence, military and student records, an unfinished novel, articles, editorials and clippings. There is a gap in the material from 1955 when Wales left the Boston Herald until 1962 when he returned from the Virgin Islands to work in Albany.
The collection is broadly arranged into four kinds of material: Correspondence, student-faculty records, writings, and biographical and reference. The correspondence, arranged chronologically, contains congratulatory letters and exchanges of information relating to his editorials and to his feature articles on medicine for the Boston Herald. Also present is job correspondence covering the early years of the 1940's and 1950's. It was kept separate from the general correspondence because Wales segregated it and because of its internal unity. It provides some suggestion of employment conditions in newspaper work during the early years of World War II, as well as a clear view of the drive possessed by Wales as a young journalism graduate. The later correspondence is that of a young but experienced editor, who has resigned a lucrative position over a matter of principle. As he writes in quest of a new position his letters reveal both the comradeship and the competition of the world of American journalism.
The student-faculty materials include research papers, course notes and exams from Wales' student years at Columbia University, an unfinished novel written under Archibald MacLeish while Wales was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, and lecture notes for a journalism course Wales taught at Boston University in 1954-1955 while on the staff of The Boston Herald.
The bulk of Wales' writings consist of editorials that he prepared for the Auburn Citizen Advertiser, the Albany Knickerbocker News, and the New York Times. In addition, Wales kept a diary in India and Burma in 1944, while he was attached to the 164th Signal Corps; a photocopy of the diary is included in the papers. His other writings included articles and reference materials on military preparedness, a subject in which he was especially interested. Among other things, he opposed the Eisenhower plans for defense spending cuts. Also present are: a group of feature articles on the medical profession and the general problems of health and hospitalization; a folder of miscellaneous articles; and a review of a book authored by Edward Brooke, then Attorney General of Massachusetts.
Biographical and reference materials contain a short auto-biographical sketch and picture, military records, a folder of clippings, a cover to a Signal Corps Magazine with Wales' picture on it and a special issue of the Harvard Crimson which Wales helped prepare while a Nieman fellow.
