1940s Archive of Ephemera of Yann de Pierrefeu, Prolific Harvard Dropout and Writer

On offer is an interesting collection of ephemera belonging to an eccentric and very prolific 20th century American writer, Yann de Pierrefeu, of Ipswich, Massachusetts​​.

The ephemera collection consists of items connected to de Pierrefeu and his family, such as bills and statements (26), envelopes (5), banking and stock items (5) and 1 black and white photograph. The photograph shows de Pierrefeu with his wife Ellen and their son Alain.

de Pierrefeu was born in France in 1905. His father was a French aristocrat – Count Alain de Pierrefeu who was killed in 1915 in WWI. His mother was an American, the granddaughter of Frederic Tudor – the famous Boston ‘Ice King’ who pioneered of the international ice trade in the early 19th century. Tudor made his considerable fortune shipping ice cut from New England ponds to ports in the Caribbean, Europe, and as far away as India and Hong Kong.

De Pierrefeu attended but did not graduate from Harvard University complaining of too much work and not enough time for 'human relationships'. He was fortunate that he had inheritances and his wife’s family trust fund to support himself. There is evidence as well that he was a successful speculator in the stock market. which enabled him to devote much of his time to writing and photography. He considered himself a photographer, historian and writer but he was also a futurist describing his beliefs for the future (sometimes 100 years in the future). He had a keen interest in pre WWII European events and wrote extensively about them.

This collection of ephemera grounds this prolific writer and thinker into the real world of Massachusetts in the 1940’s. It would be an excellent addition to a collection of his works.