Preliminary Guide to the William Campbell Gault Collection
Preliminary arrangement and description by D. Tambo
Department of Special Collections
Davidson Library
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone: (805) 893-3062
Fax: (805) 893-5749
Email: special@library.ucsb.edu
URL: http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/speccoll.html
© 2011
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Preliminary Guide to the William Campbell Gault Collection
Collection number: Mss 284
Department of Special Collections
Davidson Library
University of California, Santa Barbara
- Processed by:
- Preliminary arrangement and description by D. Tambo.
- Date completed:
- January 18, 2011
- Encoded by:
- A. Demeter
© 2011 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Descriptive Summary
Title: William Campbell Gault Collection
Dates: ca. 1937-1996
Collection number: Mss 284
Creator:
Gault, William Campbell
Collection Size:
5.2 linear feet
(5 cartons and 1 oversize box).
Repository:
University of California, Santa Barbara. Library.
Dept. of Special Collections
Abstract: The bulk of the collection consists of work by Santa Barbara crime and young adult fiction writer William Campbell Gault,
including hard covers, paperbacks, and stories in anthologies and pulp magazines.
Physical location: Boxes 1-5 (Del Sur); Box 6 (Del Sur Oversize).
Languages:
English
Access Restrictions
None.
Publication Rights
Copyright has not been assigned to the Department of Special Collections, UCSB. All requests for permission to publish or
quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given
on behalf of the Department of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply
permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained.
Preferred Citation
William Campbell Gault Collection. Mss 284. Department of Special Collections, Davidson Library, University of California,
Santa Barbara.
Acquisition Information
Gift of Shelley Gault, 2010.
Biography
William Campbell Gault (1910-1995) was born and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He lived mostly in that city until he moved
to California in 1950. He served in the 166th Infantry during World War II. Before he became a professional writer, he held
a variety of jobs, including ice man, mailman, aircraft assembler, sole cutter in a shoe factory, bus boy, waiter, and hotel
manager. Gault wrote under his own name and pseudonyms such as Roney Scott and Will Duke.
Scope and Content of Collection
The bulk of the collection consists of work by Santa Barbara crime and young adult fiction writer William Campbell Gault,
including hard covers, paperbacks, and stories in anthologies and pulp magazines. English-language monographs have been cataloged
separately and can be searched on Pegasus, the UCSB Library online catalog. Foreign-language editions and magazines are housed
in this manuscript collection.
The collection also contains awards, correspondence, a few black and white photographs of Gault and fellow mystery writers,
mystery and sport stories mainly appearing in pulp magazines from the latter 1930s to the early 1960s.
Indexing Terms
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Gault, William Campbell
Detective and mystery stories
Box 1
Awards – incl. Boucheron XII award (Milwaukee, 1981) in the form of a leather shoe sole [Gault had been a sole cutter in a
Milwaukee shoe factory in his younger days]; Shamus Award,Best Paperback Novel, 1983; and Boucheron .22 Lifetime Achievement
Award (Pasadena, 1991)
Box 1
Bio – incl. articles about Gault
Box 1
Card File – publication information about stories
Cassette Sets [audio books]
Box 2
The Best Mystery Stories of the Year (incl. Gault's "The Kerman Kill"),
1988
Box 2
The Bloodstained Bokhara,
1990
Box 2
Congdon, Michael – agent,
ca. 1990-1992
Box 2
Pronzini, Bill – agent / editor,
1991-1994
Box 2
Sternig, Larry – literary agent,
1990-1996
Box 2
Income and Wordage,
1945-1975,
1979
Box 2
Royalties – by year and by title,
ca. 1960s-1991
Box 2
Hard Boiled Dicks, No. 3 (June 1982) – Special William Campbell Gault Issue
Box 2
Dead Pigeon – typescript,
1992
Box 2
The San Valdesto Connection – typescript, n.d.
Box 2
Photographs – Gault and fellow mystery writers
Box 2
"Private Eye Writers of America" – List,
1993
Box 2
Reviews – of Gault's publications
Box 2
Scrapbook – clippings with stories about Gault and one-page "Daily Short Story" works by him
Box 2
Yearbook – Wauwatosa [WI] High School, 1927 – Gault on p. 44
Box 3
Foreign Language Editions
Scope and Content Note
incl. Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese
Pulp Magazines
Scope and Content Note
mystery and sport stories by Gault (usually the cover and the story pages, not the whole magazine)
Box 5
Larry Sterling Literary Agency (Milwaukee, WI) – apparently stories by Gault handled by the agency
Box 6
Photograph – two black and white portraits of Gault,
ca. 1950s-1960s
Box 6
Saturday Evening Post – issues with Gault stories,
1951-1953
