Writings,, 1955-1979

Summary: Outlines, typescripts, press clippings, book reviews and limited correspondence relating to Shadow of Heroes, Khartoum, The Animal Within, African Genesis, The Territorial Imperative, The Soul of the Ape, The Social Contract, The Hunting Hypothesis and the unpublished "The Education of Robert Ardrey." Also included are approximately twenty typescripts of essays, a smaller number of published articles and book reviews, and the notes used by Ardrey when lecturing to audiences in the United States, Western Europe and South Africa, and copies of Ardrey=s printed books (bearing his ownership stamp).

Among the documents in this series are holograph and typescript copies and excerpts of letters from Eugene Marais to Dr. Winfred de Kok Coppard, 1935 1936.

The first half of Ardrey's autobiography (which was completed in 1979) includes descriptions of the South Side of Chicago during the era of Al Capone, life as a Hollywood screenwriter, the blacklisting of actors and directors during the 1940s, South Africa and apartheid, anthropological theory, Ardrey's family, and travels in Argentina, Africa, Yugoslavia, Western Europe and the United States. Anecdotes related in the autobiography pertain to many actors, directors, screenwriters, playwrights and producers active in New York and Hollywood during the 1940s and 1950s.

The autobiography's second half describes Ardrey's career as a writer and theorist on the origins of man and his gradual integration into the scientific and academic community. It documents his own enthusiasms, philosophy and intellectual growth as he prepared for and wrote his four books about man's physical, temperamental, psychological and social evolution.