UT Austin Acquires Entire Archive of Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Posted on November 24, 2014

The University of Texas at Austin just scored a major literary coup. The university's humanities research library and museum, The Harry Ransom Center, has acquired the archive of Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The archive is a treasure trove of documentation of the author's work and life. The majority of the materials are in Spanish. The archive includes original manuscripts for ten books, including those of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), and Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004). The archive also includes a massive amount of correspondence, including more than 2000 letters and notes including letters from Carlos Fuentes and Graham Greene. The authors was a prolific photographer: the university now owns 40 photograph albums which cover 90 years during his lifetime, as well as scrapbooks, and the original typewriters and computers on which he wrote his books and stories. It's a very thorough collection; it even includes drafts of the author's 1982 speech accepting the Nobel Prize.

Scholars are anxiously awaiting the cataloging and organization of the collection, which must occur before it is available for study. Some of the more interesting items in the collection include include several drafts of the author's unpublished novel We'll See Each Other in August and the original typescript of the 1981 novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold. The typescript is heavily annotated, giving a glimpse into how Garcia Marquez structured and revised his work.

The museum is planning to digitize portions of the collection, which will be a boon to scholars the world over. Also in the works is a symposium to explore the influence of the author's work. Stephen Enniss, director of the Harry Ransom Center, is delighted with the purchase. He said in a statement, "This acquisition marks an important extension of the Center's literary holdings. García Márquez has had as important an influence on the novel of the second half of the 20th century as James Joyce had on the first half."

We certainly can't argue with that. The Ransom Center has deep pockets and loyal donors. Its amazing collection also includes important works by authors who influenced Garcia Marquez, including James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges and William Faulkner. It is ironic that Garcia Marquez's archive will be housed in the U.S., for which he had no great love. A good friend of Fidel Castro, the author was suspicious of the U.S. and its policies. The bidding was heated and UT beat out Mexico's National Council of Arts and Culture to snap up the archive. The family reportedly wanted the archive in the safest place with the best security and state of the art conservation techniques. Given the tumult in Mexico with the violence and cartels, they decided the safest place for his work was Austin, Texas.