• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Ransom Center Magazine

  • Articles
  • Sections
    • Art
    • Conservation
    • Exhibitions + Events
    • Film
    • Literature
    • Performing Arts
    • Photography
    • Rare Books
    • Research + Teaching
  • Print Edition
    • Fall 2019
    • Spring 2019
    • Fall 2018
    • Spring 2018
    • Fall 2017

Doris Lessing

Celebrating 100 years of Doris Lessing

October 22, 2019 By Harry Ransom Center

Doris Lessing

Nobel Prize–winning author Doris Lessing was born one hundred years ago, on October 22, 1919. [Read more…] about Celebrating 100 years of Doris Lessing

Filed Under: archive, Authors, Books + Manuscripts, Exhibitions + Events, Featured1, literature Tagged With: Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize in Literature, science fiction

Commitment to collecting

December 9, 2015 By Harry Ransom Center

Going back to the origins of research libraries, there is a long history of scholars building collections to suit personal interests, constructing around themselves an athenaeum of books that supported their individual research goals. [Read more…] about Commitment to collecting

Filed Under: Acquisitions, Research + Teaching Tagged With: acquisition, Acquisitions, archive, archives, B. S. Johnson, collecting, collection strengths, collections, David Mamet, Doris Lessing, Elizabeth Hardwick, humanities, Mark Collins, Norman Mailer, Penelope Lively, Research

Coleccionismo comprometido

October 21, 2015 By Harry Ransom Center

Undated photograph of Mailer with wife Beatrice Silverman. Unknown photographer.

Cuando se busca en tiempo atrás los orígenes de las bibliotecas de investigación, damos con una larga historia de académicos dedicados a recabar colecciones de acuerdo a su interés personal, construyendo en torno suyo ateneos de libros que documentaran sus muy particulares metas de investigación. Y muchas veces, cuando dicho académico proseguía su carrera –en otro trabajo o en otro contexto intelectual- la colección emprendida se marchitaba, sin la mente directriz inicial que siguiera contando su historia. [Read more…] about Coleccionismo comprometido

Filed Under: Acquisitions, Authors Tagged With: acquisition, B. S. Johnson, collecting, collection strengths, David Mamet, Doris Lessing, Elizabeth Hardwick, Norman Mailer, Penelope Lively, Research

Fellows Find: Doris Lessing correspondence deepens insight into The Grass is Singing

October 15, 2015 By Harry Ransom Center

Doris Lessing, unknown photographer. Ca. 1950s.

“Have you had a look in the Knopf collection?” Rick Watson, the head of reference services at the Ransom Center, sounded casual, and I wasn’t sure I had time to take the detour he was suggesting.

I spent a month at the Ransom Center last year, working mainly with the extensive Doris Lessing archive. [Read more…] about Fellows Find: Doris Lessing correspondence deepens insight into The Grass is Singing

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts, Research + Teaching Tagged With: Alfred Knopf, correspondence, Doris Lessing, Fellows Find, Harry Ransom Center, publisher, The Grass is Singing

Acclaimed writer Ian McEwan’s archive acquired

May 15, 2014 By Alicia Dietrich

The Harry Ransom Center has acquired the archive of writer Ian McEwan (b. 1948), one of the most distinguished novelists of his generation.  The archive documents McEwan’s career and includes early material from his childhood and adolescence, as well as his earliest abandoned stories dating from the late-1960s and early 1970s. The archive includes drafts of all of McEwan’s later published works including his critically acclaimed novels Amsterdam and Atonement up through On Chesil Beach and Solar.

 

McEwan composed his novels partly in longhand, typically in uniform green, spiral-bound notebooks, and party on the computer. After an initial draft, he would transfer the entire text to a computer, printing out multiple drafts, which he would revise further by hand. McEwan’s Booker Prize-winning novel Amsterdam is represented in the archive in its earliest form as a handwritten notebook, followed by two further revised drafts. McEwan often notes details of composition in these drafts, including their completion or revision dates.

 

“The writer tends to forget rapidly the routes he or she discarded along the way,” McEwan said, commenting on his manuscripts. “Sometimes the path towards a finished novel takes surprising twists. It’s rarely an even development. For example, my novel Atonement started out as a science fiction story set two or three centuries into the future.”

 

Read a Q&A with McEwan, where he shares insights about his archive, writing process, and more.

 

McEwan’s archive will reside at the Ransom Center alongside the archives of many of his peers and contemporaries, including his longtime friend Julian Barnes, as well as J. M. Coetzee, Doris Lessing, Jayne Anne Phillips, and Tom Stoppard. The McEwan materials will be accessible once processed and cataloged.

 

McEwan will visit Austin and speak at the university on Sept. 10. More details about this event will be posted here later this summer.

 

Please click on thumbnails below to view larger images.

Photo of Ian McEwan as a young boy with his parents in Singapore, ca. 1954.
Photo of Ian McEwan as a young boy with his parents in Singapore, ca. 1954.
Ian McEwan's grade school report card, ca. 1958.
Ian McEwan’s grade school report card, ca. 1958.
Photo of Ian McEwan as a young boy in 1956 in Libya, North Africa.
Photo of Ian McEwan as a young boy in 1956 in Libya, North Africa.
Letter from Ian McEwan to his then-8-year-old son William, dated March 4, 1991.
Letter from Ian McEwan to his then-8-year-old son William, dated March 4, 1991.
Letter from Ian McEwan to his then-8-year-old son William, dated March 4, 1991.
Letter from Ian McEwan to his then-8-year-old son William, dated March 4, 1991.
Letter from Ian McEwan to his then-5-year-old son Gregory, dated March 5, 1991.
Letter from Ian McEwan to his then-5-year-old son Gregory, dated March 5, 1991.
Letter from Ian McEwan to his then-5-year-old son Gregory, dated March 5, 1991.
Letter from Ian McEwan to his then-5-year-old son Gregory, dated March 5, 1991.
Typescript of Ian McEwan's short story "A Very Very Very Very Very Old Lady," dated Aug. 21, 1975. McEWan wrote the story for his then-5-year-old stepdaughter Polly for her to illustrate.
Typescript of Ian McEwan’s short story “A Very Very Very Very Very Old Lady,” dated Aug. 21, 1975. McEWan wrote the story for his then-5-year-old stepdaughter Polly for her to illustrate.
Typescript of Ian McEwan's short story "A Very Very Very Very Very Old Lady," dated Aug. 21, 1975. McEWan wrote the story for his then-5-year-old stepdaughter Polly for her to illustrate.
Typescript of Ian McEwan’s short story “A Very Very Very Very Very Old Lady,” dated Aug. 21, 1975. McEWan wrote the story for his then-5-year-old stepdaughter Polly for her to illustrate.
Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes on a hike in Knoydart, Scotland, in 2012, wearing "midgehoods" for protection. Photo by Annalena McAfee.
Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes on a hike in Knoydart, Scotland, in 2012, wearing “midgehoods” for protection. Photo by Annalena McAfee.
Ian McEwan's first draft of "On Chesil Beach."
Ian McEwan’s first draft of “On Chesil Beach.”
Pages from Ian McEwan's notebook related to "On Chesil Beach."
Pages from Ian McEwan’s notebook related to “On Chesil Beach.”

Filed Under: Acquisitions, Authors, Books + Manuscripts, News Tagged With: acquisition, Amsterdam, archives, Atonement, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, J. M. Coetzee, Jayne Anne Phillips, Julian Barnes, Man Booker Prize, Manuscripts, On Chesil Beach, Solar, Tom Stoppard

Two Ransom Center archives illuminate Doris Lessing’s life, work, and relationships

November 19, 2013 By Megan Barnard

Clancy Sigal and Doris Lessing, ca. late 1950s.

Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing died on Sunday at the age of 94. She was born in what is now Iran, grew up on a farm in Zimbabwe, lived briefly in a boarding house in South Africa, and settled as an adult in London. She was deeply influenced by the racial and social injustices she witnessed, and her books reflect a lifetime of experience observing racism, colonialism, communism, and terrorism. She wrote frankly about relationships between women and men and is heralded as an early feminist writer, though she never embraced that distinction. She was an avid reader and was largely self-educated through books, as her formal education ended when she was just 15 years old. Yet she remained unsentimental about books. In one letter in her archive, which resides at the Ransom Center, Lessing noted, “[I] wish that people would just read books and get all the sustenance from them they can—and then throw them away and go on to the next useful sustaining book.”

 

Early in her career, Lessing applied this same attitude toward her manuscripts. As a young writer in England, she had little space and less money. She moved frequently and saw little value in her cumbersome stacks of manuscripts and papers, so she discarded them. As a result, manuscripts of many of her most notable books, including The Golden Notebook, have been lost.

 

Fortunately, Lessing later changed her ways. The drafts and working papers of more than 50 of her novels, plays, stories, and other works are available for research at the Ransom Center, where they have resided since 1999. The 45-box collection includes Lessing’s Canopus in Argos series, her two autobiographies, and novels such as The Good Terrorist and Mara and Dann. Although few of Lessing’s early works appear in the archive, another Ransom Center collection offers a rare glimpse of Doris Lessing from this period.

 

American author Clancy Sigal lived with Lessing in London in the late 1950s. In many ways, they were kindred spirits. The two writers were passionate about many of the same social concerns. In the photograph above, the two can be seen, according to Sigal, “in a bus, in the mud, on our way to cut through the barbed wire of a nuclear air base.” Their relationship may have been intellectually deep, but it was emotionally fraught and stormy. It also provided great fodder for literature. It’s no secret that Lessing modeled the infamous Saul Green of The Golden Notebook on Sigal. Once at a party, Lessing even boasted to the guests, “I invented Clancy.” Sigal was less than thrilled to appear in Lessing’s novel, a book that is widely hailed as a cornerstone of feminist literature. Yet he, too, looked to their relationship for inspiration, even decades after it had ended. Rose O’Malley from Sigal’s 1992 novel Secret Defector, is just one of many characters he created who bear a striking resemblance to Lessing.

 

The journals in Clancy Sigal’s archive detail the difficulties of their relationship, and traces of their time together appear throughout his writings. His archive includes letters from Lessing, some dated long after their relationship had ended, showing that they remained friends for decades. In one such letter, written in November 2001, not long after the September 11th attacks, Lessing harkened back to their earlier years of social activism, “Do you think the world is even madder now than [w]hen we knew it was?” she asked. “God, what a world.”

 

Image: Clancy Sigal and Doris Lessing, ca. late 1950s. 

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts Tagged With: Clancy Segal, Doris Lessing, Secret Defector, The Golden Notebook

Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STZt3_D4Eg0

Archives

Before Footer

Sign up for eNews





Connect With Us

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

About

Ransom Center Magazine is an online and print publication sharing stories and news about the Harry Ransom Center, its collections, and the creative community surrounding it.
Contributors



HRC logo

Copyright © 2019 The Harry Ransom Center Magazine


The University of Texas at Austin · Web Privacy Policy · Web Accessibility Policy