Harvard Acquires Vidal Manuscripts and Letters

After nearly two years of negotiation with author and intellectual Gore Vidal, Harvard has acquired nearly 230 cubic feet of original Vidal manuscripts and correspondence, University Library officials announced this week.

“This is a big acquisition for us and we’re very happy about it,” said Leslie A. Morris, head curator of manuscripts at Harvard’s Houghton Library, where the University keeps rare books and manuscripts.

“The papers of Gore Vidal will be part of a world-renowned collection that includes the papers of American writers from Henry Adams and Henry James to Sarah Orne Jewett, Louisa May Alcott and John Ashberry,” said William P. Stoneman, Fearrington librarian of Houghton, in a press release.

Vidal had originally given the papers to the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research about forty years ago, when film, theater and television were his primary interests.

In time, though, Vidal’s interests returned to fiction and nonfiction writing—“Vidal really saw himself as a novelist,” Morris said.

Both Vidal and the University of Wisconsin felt that the collection had grown “out of their scope,” Morris said.

Famed historian David Herbert Donald was the first to suggest that Harvard should house the Vidal collection. Donald, who is Warren professor of American history emeritus, had become acquainted with Vidal while writing a biography on Abraham Lincoln, the subject of one of Vidal’s best-known novels.

Nothing was done to effect the transfer, though, until retired Houghton keeper of printed books James Walsh happened to visit Vidal’s villa outside of Ravello, Italy, on a trip to the country.

While at Vidal’s villa, Walsh and Vidal agreed that Harvard—which already had a near complete collection of Vidal’s printed materials—was a more appropriate permanent location for the manuscripts and correspondences than the University of Wisconsin.

Vidal and the universities reached a “three-way agreement” and the books were transferred to Harvard’s library, Morris said.

According to Morris, the acquisition includes correspondence between Vidal and Norman Mailor, Joyce Carol Oates, John Cheever, Richard Burton, Norman Lear, Federico Fellini, Tennessee Williams, and others.

The acquisition also includes a collection of video tapes and film of Vidal’s past appearances on television.

The collection should be fully accessible to students and faculty by 2007, Morris said, and in the meantime Houghton will offer “as much access as we can” to students writing dissertations involving Vidal’s work.

Houghton archivists will spend the next five years cataloguing the collection alphabetically, instead of chronologically as it is currently organized.