Performance notebooks and journals from the Spalding Gray archive.

The Ransom Center has acquired the archive of writer and actor Spalding Gray (1941–2004). Spanning more than 40 years, the archive traces the author’s career since the late 1970s, when Gray helped define a new era in theater where public and private life became an indivisible part of each new performance.

Recognized for his critically acclaimed dramatic monologues in which he drew upon his experiences, Gray wrote and performed such works as Swimming to Cambodia (1985), Monster in a Box (1992), Gray’s Anatomy (1994), It’s a Slippery Slope (1997) and Morning, Noon and Night (1999).

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The David Foster Wallace papers have been cataloged and are now available for study in the Ransom Center’s reading room. Since last March when the Center announced its acquisition of the papers, a few small collections have arrived that complement the archive acquired from Wallace’s Estate.

Just weeks after we announced the acquisition, the Ransom Center was contacted by Steve Kleinedler, supervising editor of American Heritage Dictionary (AHD). Wallace was a member of the AHD usage panel, a group of individuals AHD consulted about issues related to usage and grammar. Each year, AHD sends a survey or “usage ballot” of questions to its board members—asking, for example, the acceptable use of specific words—and the responses influence how AHD defines appropriate usage in its dictionaries. Wallace, whose facility with language was exceptional, was enthusiastic about serving on the AHD usage panel, and his survey responses demonstrate how seriously he took his role. Though most of the questions were designed so that they could be answered with a mere check mark, the six usage ballots that Wallace completed are covered with his comments and questions. AHD sent the Ransom Center copies of David Foster Wallace’s usage ballots, and a few sample pages can be seen in the slideshow above.

Within days of hearing from AHD about their Wallace materials, the Ransom Center received a call from Jay Jennings, the former editor of Tennis Magazine, who in 1996 commissioned Wallace to write an article about the U.S. Open (published as “Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open”). The editor had a file of corrected proofs and correspondence related to the article that he wanted to contribute to the archive. These papers provide a wonderful example of how involved Wallace was in the editorial process. Wallace had warned the editor that he would be a difficult editee, but the papers demonstrate the contrary. Though Wallace’s comments on the proof pages are often assertive, they are equally good-natured, dotted throughout with smiley faces, and oftentimes showing his humor. A sample page can be seen in the above slideshow.

Both of these collections were donated to the Ransom Center by individuals who admired Wallace’s work and felt compelled to make a contribution to his archive. This generosity of spirit is characteristic of the enthusiastic and very personal responses the Ransom Center has received from a number of devoted readers of Wallace’s works over the past several months, readers who wanted to give something back to the community in honor of a writer they admired deeply.

Page 1 of corrected proof of David Foster Wallace's 1996 essay on the U.S. Open for 'Tennis Magazine.'

Anthony and Bertram Rota. Photo courtesy of Bertram Rota Booksellers.

The Ransom Center notes with great sorrow the death of Anthony Bertram Rota on December 13, 2009. As managing director and chairman of Bertram Rota Ltd, the London-based antiquarian bookseller was greatly influential in shaping the Center’s renowned holdings of the papers of numerous nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first–century British writers. Over a succession of five Ransom Center directors, the firm sold more than 500 collections to the Center, including the personal papers of several writing dynasties, notably those of Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell Sitwell, and Theodore Francis, Llewellyn, and John Cowper Powys.

In his memoir, Books in the Blood (Oak Knoll Press, 2002), Anthony Rota recalled his annual travels to the United States:…

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Learn more about the David Foster Wallace collection on the Ransom Center’s website.

Materials from the David Foster Wallace collection

The Ransom Center has acquired the papers of American novelist Jayne Anne Phillips. Phillips has published six novels and story collections over the last three decades. Her most recent work is Lark and Termite (2009).

Phillips visited the Ransom Center recently and recorded a reading of Lark and Termite, which you can listen to here.

Known for her poetic prose and her in-depth study of family dynamics, Phillips has received critical acclaim and major literary prizes, including a Guggenheim fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Phillips is professor of English and director of the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing at Rutgers University, Newark.

The acquisition contains manuscripts in…