Rupert Hughes was born in 1872 in Manchester, Missouri. When he was seven, his family moved to Keokuk, Iowa, where his father was mayor for a time. He had a sister, Greta, and three brothers, Howard, Felix, and Reginald. Howard went on to invent a tool for oil-drilling and to become the father of the famous millionaire recluse, Howard Hughes. Rupert received an A.B. from Western Reserve University in 1892 and an A.M. from Yale University. Western Reserve awarded him a Litt.D. in 1936. Hughes had a career that incorporated many disciplines. He wrote music and about music. He wrote poetry, plays, novels, novelettes, screenplays, and biographies. His favorite among his works was a three-volume biography of George Washington (with a fourth volume incomplete at the time of his death). He published more than sixty books and many short stories. He directed the adaptations of some of his novels for the screen. More than fifty movies were based on his writings. He achieved great success in Hollywood and was a popular host. He was the first president of the Hollywood Writers Group (which later became the Screen Writers Guild). He published his first poem at the age of seven .When he died at the age of eighty-four in 1956, he had been writing for nearly seventy-five years. Hughes wrote his manuscripts longhand and then had them typed. Once typed, he destroyed his handwritten drafts. As a consequence, very few of his manuscripts survive. This collection includes two manuscripts, one for a short story, "The Baby's Shoes," and one for a collection of poems, "The Christmas Rendezvous." A larger number of his letters survive, including those in this collection. In 1984, a researcher created a list of known Hughes materials; see Hughes holdings at other institutions. See also Kemm, James O. "The Literary Legacy of Rupert Hughes." The manuscripts of "The Baby's Shoes" and "The Christmas Rendezvous" were given to the University of Iowa by Hughes in 1950.