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

Ransom Center Magazine

  • Articles
  • Sections
    • Art
    • Books + Manuscripts
    • Conservation
    • Exhibitions + Events
    • Film
    • Literature
    • Photography
    • Research + Teaching
    • Theatre + Performing Arts
  • Print Edition

Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection

Inside the Gabriel García Márquez Archive

May 10, 2015 - Marlene Renz

Gabriel García Márquez's first draft of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Gabriel García Márquez was a perfectionist when creating his masterpieces, and that quality is demonstrated in his manuscripts. With the Ransom Center’s recent acquisition of the late author’s archive, scholars will be able to see the author’s edits and discuss García Márquez’s writing process. José Montelongo, the interim Latin American bibliographer at the university’s Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, writes about the thrill of delving into García Márquez’s manuscripts and exploring the pentimenti—repentances, compunctions, remorses—in the archive. This piece originally appeared in the Spring 2015 Ransom Edition newsletter.

[Read more…] about Inside the Gabriel García Márquez Archive

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts, Research + Teaching Tagged With: acquisition, Acquisitions, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gabriel Garcia Marquez archive, José Montelongo, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, The Autumn of the Patriarch

Ransom Center acquires archive of Gabriel García Márquez

November 24, 2014 - Jennifer Tisdale

Gabriel García Márquez working on "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

The Harry Ransom Center has acquired the archive of Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014). The archive documents the life and work of García Márquez, an author who obtained nearly unanimous critical acclaim and a worldwide readership.

Spanning more than half a century, García Márquez’s archive includes original manuscript material, predominantly in Spanish, for 10 books, from One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) to Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) to Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004); more than 2,000 pieces of correspondence, including letters from Carlos Fuentes and Graham Greene; drafts of his 1982 Nobel Prize acceptance speech; more than 40 photograph albums documenting all aspects of his life over nearly nine decades; the Smith Corona typewriters and computers on which he wrote some of the 20th century’s most beloved works; and scrapbooks meticulously documenting his career via news clippings from Latin America and around the world.

Highlights in the archive include multiple drafts of García Márquez’s unpublished novel We’ll See Each Other in August, research for The General in His Labyrinth (1989), and a heavily annotated typescript of the novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981). The materials document the gestation and changes of García Márquez’s works, revealing the writer’s struggle with language and structure.

Born in Colombia, García Márquez began his career as a journalist in the 1940s, reporting from Bogotá and Cartagena and later serving as a foreign correspondent in Europe and Cuba. In 1961, he moved to Mexico City. Alongside his prolific journalism career, García Márquez published many works of fiction, including novels, novellas and multiple short story collections and screenplays. He published the first volume of his three-part memoir Vivir Para Contarla (Living to Tell the Tale) in 2002.

Supporting the university’s acquisition is LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, a partnership between the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies and the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection. LLILAS is regarded as one of the strongest Latin American studies programs in the country, and the Benson Collection is recognized as one of the world’s premier libraries focusing on Latin American and U.S. Latina/o studies.

Future plans relating to the archive include digitizing portions of the collection to make them widely accessible and a university symposium to explore the breadth and influence of García Márquez’s life and career. The García Márquez materials will be accessible once processed and cataloged.

Image: Gabriel García Márquez working on One Hundred Years of Solitude. Photograph by Guillermo Angulo.

Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Research + Teaching Tagged With: acquisition, Acquisitions, Carlos Fuentes, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gabriel Garcia Marquez archive, Graham Greene, Living to Tell the Tale, LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, Love in the Time of Cholera, Manuscripts, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, news, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Research, Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, The General in His Labyrinth, Vivir Para Contarla, We'll See Each Other in August

Primary Sidebar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4_kazYMjNM

Recent Posts

  • Celebrate with us in 2023
  • Photographer Laura Wilson delves into the lives of writers with stunning portraits
  • A childhood gift inspires a lifelong passion for India and map-collecting
  • “Dog” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  • A Greek fragment is the first-known New Testament papyrus written on the front side of a scroll

Tags

acquisition Alice's Adventures in Wonderland archive archives Art Books Cataloging Conservation Council on Library and Information Resources David Foster Wallace David O. Selznick digitization exhibition Exhibitions Fellows Find Fellowships Film Frank Reaugh Frank Reaugh: Landscapes of Texas and the American West Gabriel Garcia Marquez Gabriel Garcia Marquez archive Gone with the Wind I have seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America Lewis Carroll literature Magnum Photos Manuscripts Meet the Staff Nobel Prize Norman Bel Geddes Norman Mailer Performing Arts Photography poetry preservation Publishing Research Robert De Niro Shakespeare theater The King James Bible: Its History and Influence The Making of Gone With The Wind Undergraduate What is Research? World War I

Archives

Before Footer

Sign up for eNews

Our monthly newsletter highlights news, exhibitions, and programs.

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.

Copyright © 2023 Harry Ransom Center

Web Accessibility · Web Privacy