Harvard buys Updike archive
Collection includes late writer’s reviews, letters, manuscripts
Collection includes late writer’s reviews, letters, manuscripts
Harvard University has acquired the manuscripts, correspondences, and other papers of John Updike, a celebrated member of the Class of 1954 who kept a Harvard library card and frequently visited the campus to research the contemporary culture that enlivened his acclaimed fiction.
The university will announce today that Houghton Library, Harvard’s primary repository for rare books and manuscripts, will house the John Updike Archive, making the library the center for studies on the life and work of the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and prolific novelist, poet, and critic. College officials would not disclose how much Harvard paid to acquire the papers of Updike, who died in January at 76.
“John Updike is a terribly important American, given his cultural and literary achievement,’’ said William Pritchard, an English professor at Amherst College who chronicled the writer’s life and work in “Updike: America’s Man of Letters.’’ “It’s an extraordinary thing that his university is where his papers have landed.’’
Lined up, the entire archive stretches 380 linear feet. It spans 1,500 books, including Updike’s collection of his own work, published in foreign languages and English, as well as books Updike reviewed - with his pencil marks underlining the text, making notes in the margins, or bracketing a particularly well-turned phrase.
The papers also include photographs, files of brochures and fliers used in his research, sample dust-jacket designs, and letters from such literary figures as Kurt Vonnegut and Joyce Carol Oates, as well as from fans.
The archive is so extensive because Updike was not only prolific, he also was a perfectionist, said Leslie Morris, curator of modern books and manuscripts at Houghton Library, which also houses the papers of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, T.S. Eliot, and Edward Hoagland, a classmate of Updike’s.
The university will announce today that Houghton Library, Harvard’s primary repository for rare books and manuscripts, will house the John Updike Archive, making the library the center for studies on the life and work of the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and prolific novelist, poet, and critic. College officials would not disclose how much Harvard paid to acquire the papers of Updike, who died in January at 76.
“John Updike is a terribly important American, given his cultural and literary achievement,’’ said William Pritchard, an English professor at Amherst College who chronicled the writer’s life and work in “Updike: America’s Man of Letters.’’ “It’s an extraordinary thing that his university is where his papers have landed.’’
Lined up, the entire archive stretches 380 linear feet. It spans 1,500 books, including Updike’s collection of his own work, published in foreign languages and English, as well as books Updike reviewed - with his pencil marks underlining the text, making notes in the margins, or bracketing a particularly well-turned phrase.
The papers also include photographs, files of brochures and fliers used in his research, sample dust-jacket designs, and letters from such literary figures as Kurt Vonnegut and Joyce Carol Oates, as well as from fans.
The archive is so extensive because Updike was not only prolific, he also was a perfectionist, said Leslie Morris, curator of modern books and manuscripts at Houghton Library, which also houses the papers of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, T.S. Eliot, and Edward Hoagland, a classmate of Updike’s.
Read the full story at the Boston Globe online.
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