Harriette Coret Papers

Collection

Identifier: PCL-MS-0225

Staff Only

Collection Overview

Abstract

The Harriette Coret Papers consist of personal papers and literary manuscripts, as well as audio cassettes, dating from the 1940s through the 2000s.

Dates

Creation: 1941-2005, undated

Extent

3 Linear Feet (7 archives boxes )

Creator

Coret, Harriette, 1919-2015 (Person)

Scope and Contents

This collection presents a nearly complete story of the life of a writer who never seemed to stop working. The bulk of the materials relate to her work for so-called "true confession" magazines, including Modern Romances, True Story, Real Story, and Secrets. While her stories were published without a byline of any kind, where possible Mrs. Coret filed each manuscript with its published version, so researchers can identify her work and compare the two versions.

The files relating to Mrs. Coret's include full manuscripts, but also show the struggles of a writer trying to collect her royalties and clarify her contract with a small publisher whose management seemed to be constantly changing.

Another highlight of the collection is the collection of biographies written by Mrs. Coret about the residents of Stratford Court in Boca Raton, Florida. Her skill as a writer and affection for her subjects shine through here, and many of the stories themselves are fascinating.

The remainder of the collection relates to Mrs. Coret's personal life and her family. There are clippings and correspondence with her second husband, Irving Coret, as well as other members of the family. Also included are her records from Mills College, as well as materials she and others wrote for class reunions. Of particular interest is the manuscripts for Beulah's Story and Little Girl in the White Bashlik, which tells the story of her family's emigration from Russia to places such as Wyoming and Washington State. Included in the files for this story are letters from friends and acquaintences who share their immigration stories.

NOTE: Some files are marked restricted due to personal identifiable information. These files are available for researchers, but must be reveiewed by the archivist first.

Biographical / Historical

Harriette Buckner (Kolker) Coret was born in 1919 in Tacoma, Washington, to parents recently emigrated from Russia. She graduated from Mills College in Oakland, California in 1941, and went on to serve as a psychologist in the Army Air Corps during World War II. She married shortly after the war and moved to St. Louis, where she lived until 1997.

Mrs. Coret worked as a mental health professional in the St. Louis area until her retirement in the early 1980s. Her earliest published work was as the author of the advice column "Open Mind", which she wrote while working with the Mental Health Association of St. Louis and appeared in the St. Louis Globe Democrat. In the late 1970s, she also began to submit stories to so-called "true confessions" magazines such as True Story, Real Story, True Love, and True Experience. Her writing was published in these magazines well into the 1990s, although without a byline. It can be presumed that despite the titles of the magazines, Mrs. Coret's work was fiction, likely drawn from her experiences as a psychologist.

Beyond magazines, Mrs. Coret published four novels for New Readers Press in the 1990s, meant for young adults with poor literacy skills. Like her magazine stories, she drew on her professional experience, writing about teen and adult mental health issues.

In 1997 after the death of her second husband, Mrs. Coret relocated to a retirement community in Boca Raton, Florida. She continued to write, however, penning regular "Featured Resident" stories about her neighbors in the community. Mrs. Coret lived in the same community until just before her death in September, 2015.

Conditions Governing Access

No known access restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright and other restrictions may apply to the materials in this collection. Researchers using this collection assume full responsibility for conforming to the laws of libel, privacy, and copyright, and are responsible for securing permissions necessary for publication or reproduction.