The collection consists of incoming correspondence and retained carbon copies of outgoing correspondence pertaining to McMahon’s writing career during the years 1914-1928. McMahon was a prolific writer for periodicals, particularly those of the Curtis Publishing Company, and others including Country Life. McMahon wrote many articles on gardening, agriculture, and suburban architecture for The Country Gentleman, a magazine published by the Curtis Company. McMahon published a book on the topic in 1917. McMahon was also involved in promoting the work of the National War Garden Commission, during World War 1, which promoted war gardens and food conservation. The letters discuss the articles, including travel arrangements to Europe, Canada, the South, including Texas, Florida, and Louisiana, for research on articles on agriculture and labor in those places. McMahon wrote anti-immigration articles, as well as articles against Jazz Music, Flappers and the “loose morals” of the “Jazz Age”, for the Curtis Company. He also wrote articles featuring Thomas A. Edison and Herbert Hoover during this period. There are also letters concerning payment, royalties, and the concerns of his editors.  The collection also includes numerous rejection letters for a proposed novel, titled Edward Wayne, and other projects.

         John R. McMahon, author, of Little Falls, Passaic County, New Jersey, was born September 1, 1875, in British India, his parents, Rev. John Todd McMahon and Sarah (Douglas), were missionaries. McMahon was mostly self-taught, he married Margherita Arlina Hamm (died 1907); the couple had one daughter, Arlina Douglas, known on stage and in radio as Eileen Douglas, she died 1939. He next married Beatrice Lessey, a 1905 Stanford graduate, on June 17, 1913, she died in 1942.

McMahon began his career as a reporter and Sunday article writer for New York newspapers from 1894; began writing fiction for magazines in 1910; contributor Saturday Evening Post and other publications. He traveled Europe widely after World War I, the USSR in 1933. McMahon served in the Spanish-American War as a Private, Co. D, 202^nd Regiment, New York, for nine months, including three months in Cuba. McMahon was a member of the Authors’ League of America. He was the author of: Toilers and Idlers, 1907; The House that Junk Built, 1915; Success in the Suburbs, 1917; Your House, 1927; The Wright Brothers – Fathers of Flight, 1930. Editor and part author of How These Farmers Succeeded, 1919, as well as numerous articles in other publications of the Curtis Publishing Company, including The Ladies Home Journal and The Country Gentleman, amongst those of other publishers.