The Harry Ransom Center continues to monitor COVID-19 and to take appropriate steps for the safety of researchers and staff.
Because of a recent positive test result in our community, we are taking the necessary precaution of closing the Reading and Viewing Room while University Health Services engages in contact tracing.
We will reopen to researchers as soon as we are able.
[Read more…] about Reading and Viewing Room Temporarily Closed
Above: English novelist and founding president John Galsworthy, PEN founder Catharine Amy Dawson Scott, and Hermon Ould.
October 5, 1921
CATHARINE AMY DAWSON SCOTT, a poet and novelist who was sometimes described as “unstoppable,” hosted the inaugural dinner of the PEN Club at the Florence Restaurant in London. More than 40 writers and guests enjoyed a six-course banquet in the chandeliered splendor of the main dining room. The urbane John Galsworthy, the first president, offered the toast. “We writers are in some sort trustees for human nature,” he said. “If we are narrow and prejudiced, we harm the human race. And the better we know each other […], the greater the chance of human happiness in a world not, as yet, too happy.
After a fifteen-month closure, Ransom Center staff members will welcome researchers back to the Reading Room for limited research services beginning July 12th. [Read more…] about Ransom Center to reopen July 12 to researchers
The Ransom Center is now home to the papers of National Book Award–winning writer Lily Tuck. Tuck is the author of seven novels, including The News from Paraguay (2004), Siam or The Woman Who Shot a Man (1999), I Married You for Happiness (2011), and Sisters (2017); three story collections, including her most recent book Heathcliff Redux: A Novella and Stories (2020); and the biography Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante (2008). Her archive offers a fascinating record of her career through manuscripts and drafts, unpublished stories, notes, research materials, and correspondence with authors and editors such as Roger Angell, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Gordon Lish, among other materials. Shortly after the arrival of her papers at the Ransom Center, Lily Tuck answered a number of questions about her writing life and her archive.
[Read more…] about Q&A With Author Lily Tuck
In his day, Henry “Box” Brown was a celebrated stage magician who incorporated performance into his lectures on abolitionism in the United States and England. Much of what we know about him comes from his memoir, the Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself (1851).
[Read more…] about Rare ephemera shows legacy of Henry “Box” Brown
This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Learn about the series and click here to add your voice to the conversation. [Read more…] about The slow research of collection development
