Norman Holmes Pearson (April 13, 1909 – November 5, 1975) was an American academic at Yale University, and a prominent counterintelligence agent during World War II.

[1] He was born in Gardner, Massachusetts, to a locally prominent family that owned a chain of department stores.

[4] "Throughout his life he played the role of the man of letters, encouraging poets, writers, painters, and scholars..."[5] He was twice a Guggenheim Fellow, in 1948 and 1956.

Pearson was recruited by Donald Downes to work for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), in London during World War II.

By 1943 Pearson was working under James R. Murphy as part of the new X-2 CI (counterintelligence) branch that served as the link between the OSS and the British Ultra cryptoanalysis project in nearby Bletchley Park.

It is through the extended concept of "archives" that the collection has acquired its extra-literary materials such as photographs, works of art, and memorabilia.

He used his personal connections with authors like H. D., Bryher, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein to acquire major collections of their work for Yale.

's tactful editor, as well as her literary advisor and (unpaid) agent, roles that had a significant positive effect on the quantity and quality of her late work.

Pearson promoted Pound's work apart from his political involvements, helping to prevent it from being "disappeared" due to Pound's very unpopular World War II politics and consequent incarceration at St. Elizabeths Hospital (a psychiatric hospital operated by the District of Columbia Department of Mental Health).

His papers, the Norman Holmes Pearson Collection, are deposited with Yale's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.