New this month: The Future of Literary Archives

Posted by mdever on June 3, 2018 in archival research, archives, archivists, GLAM sector, literary heritage, literature, manuscripts, materiality, publishing, research

From ARC Humanities Press in June 2018 comes The Future of Literary Archives: Diasporic and Dispersed Collections at Risk , edited by David Sutton and Ann Livingstone.

From the press: “Literary archives differ from most other types of archival papers in that their locations are more diverse and difficult to predict. Acquiring institutions for literary papers have historically had very little by way of collecting policies and consequently the collecting of literary papers has often been opportunistic and serendipitous. The essays collected in this book all derive or continue from the recent work of the Diasporic Literary Archives Network, which takes a comparative, transnational and internationalist approach to studying literary manuscripts, their uses and their significance.”

The collection takes diaspora as “a philosophical framework which gives a highly original set of points of reference for the study of literary archives, including concepts such as the natural home, the appropriate location, exile, dissidence, fugitive existence, cultural hegemony, patrimony, heritage, and economic migration.”

Table of contents:

Introduction: Literary papers as the most ‘diasporic’ of all archives – David C. Sutton

Part One: Diasporic Lives, Diasporic Archives

Caribbean literary archives and the politics of location: Challenging the norms of belonging – Alison Donnell
The Huntley Archives at London Metropolitan Archives – Maureen Roberts
Conserving private literary and editorial archives: The story of the IMEC – André Derval
Migration, Freedom of Expression and the Importance of Diasporic Literary Archives – Jennifer Toews

Part Two: The Challenges of Literary Archives

The Universal Dimension of Diasporic Literary Archives – Jens Boel
Namibian literary archives: New beginnings and a possible African model – Veno V. Kauaria and David C. Sutton
Francophone Archives at Risk – Sophie Heywood
Italian Literary Archives: Legacies and Challenges – Daniela La Penna

Part Three: The World beyond Literary Archives

Unknown/Unknowns and Known/Unknowns – Trudy Huskamp Peterson
Publishers’ archives, author’s papers and literary scholarship – Andrew Nash
Diasporic archives in translation research: A Case Study of Anthony Burgess’s Archives – Serenella Zanotti

Part Four: Conclusion

Conclusion: The Future of Literary Manuscripts: An International Perspective – David C. Sutton

APPENDIX ONE: Authors and their papers: A guidance sheet for authors and writers