Ballard archive saved for nation
BBC News, Thursday, 10 June 2010

JG Ballard. Photo: British Library Board

Empire of the Sun author Ballard died in April 2009 at the age of 78.
The papers cover Ballard's output from 1962's The Drowned World to Miracles of Life in 2008. The material has been gathered from his home to offer an insight into his creative process.
The 15 large storage boxes containing manuscripts, notebooks and letters offer an "extraordinary insight" into the novelist, said the British Library.

They demonstrate how his fiction and memoirs were composed, and include corrections written on A4 sheets of paper, as well as notebooks filled with ideas such as: "Topics that interest me - airports ideas re passengers take over airport & establish a city-state."

His manuscript for 1984's Empire of the Sun runs to 840 numbered pages and contains "extensive" re-workings, the British Library said.
Other items include photographs of a young Ballard with his family, and ephemera including school reports, passports and his birth certificate.

The archive takes up around 12 linear metres in shelf space in the British Library and is expected to be fully accessible by summer 2011.
Before his death, Ballard had expressed a wish to his two daughters, Fay and Bea, that the archive should be kept at the Library.
They said in a statement that they were "pleased" the documents would be made widely available to the general public.
"The material has been gathered from his home to offer an insight into his creative process," they said.
"We hope the public will come and read his manuscripts, notebooks, letters and more, knowing that these materials will be cared for by the British Library in perpetuity."