Arthur & George

urn:taro:utexas.hrc.00182 Julian Barnes: A Preliminary Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center Finding aid created by Liz Murray and Hope Donovan Rider. Harry Ransom Center, 2002, 2006 Text for 2001 acquisition converted by SPI Content Sciences Inc., July 2003. 2006 acquisition encoded by Katy Hill, 21 July 2008. General edits, edits to electronic files description, and finding aid merge done by Kelsey Handler, March 2025. Finding aid written in English. 2025 March 25 Finding Aid merged and electronic records re-arranged and re-described by Kelsey Handler. Collection Summary Julian Barnes Papers 1960-2008 (bulk 1980-2008) Manuscript Collection MS-04893 Papers include early typescript drafts, printer's copies, proofs, production material, and reviews of Barnes's works as well as his crime novels written under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. There are also articles by and about Barnes, book reviews, fan mail, publisher's correspondence, letters from acquaintances and writers, publicity clippings, photographs, and posters. The addition to the original acquisition contains material related to Barnes's literary activity from 2002 to 2006, as well as older journalistic writings and correspondence primarily from the 1990s. Contents include his 2006 novel Arthur & George, three works of collected essays and short stories, articles, book reviews, other writings, and career-related material. A third acquisition contains digital photographs from professional travel in 2006 to 2008. English 19 boxes (12.18 linear feet), 4 oversize boxes, 1 oversize folder, and 481 electronic files (2.4 GB) Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin Barnes, Julian, 1946- Acquisition:

Purchases, 2001 (2001-12-0006-P), 2006 (2006-07-0007-P); Gift, 2014 (2014-12-0011-G)

Access:

Open for research, with the exception of restricted contracts and related correspondence. Researchers must create an online Research Account and agree to the Materials Use Policy before using archival materials. To request access to electronic files, please email Reference.

Restrictions on Use:

Certain restrictions apply to the use of electronic files. Researchers must agree to the Materials Use Policy for Electronic Files before accessing them. Original computer disks and forensic disk images are restricted. Copying electronic files, including screenshots and printouts, is not permitted.

Processed by:

Liz Murray, 2002; Hope Donovan Rider and Liz Murray, 2007; Chance Adams, Brenna Edwards, and Kelsey Handler (electronic records), 2015-2022, 2025

Scope and Contents

2001 Acquisition

The papers of British writer Julian Barnes span a thirty-year career from his first published fiction A Self-Possessed Woman (1975) to his novel Love, etc., published in 2000. Represented in the collection are Barnes's novels Metroland (1980), Before She Met Me (1982), Flaubert's Parrot (1984), Staring at the Sun (1986), A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (1989), Talking It Over (1991), The Porcupine (1992), Cross-Channel (1996), England, England (1998), and Love, etc. (2000). Also included are crime novels Barnes wrote under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh, Going to the Dogs (1987), Duffy (1980), Fiddle City (1981), and Putting the Boot In (1985). Articles by and about Barnes, journalism, correspondence, clippings, photographs, and posters are also present.

This acquisition is organized in four series: Series I. Works, Series II. Articles, Series III. Correspondence, 1971-1998, and Series IV. Career-related.

The Works Series begins with two holograph notebooks containing early material relating to most of Barnes's books. In his description of his writing methods, Barnes indicated that "There might be an occasion when the germ--or rather the pre-germ--of a novel makes an earlier appearance in a travel diary or a personal journal…." The series continues in an alphabetical arrangement of works by title. In addition to the novels, the collection contains Barnes's unpublished non-fiction work A Literary Guide to Oxford, production material for Letters from London (1995) and Evermore (1996), and screenplays Growing Up in the Gorbals, and The Private Wound. Screenplay adaptations, written by others, for Love, etc., and Metroland are also present.

Describing his papers, Barnes wrote "everything I do from the moment I am faced by what I recognize as the possibility--or pre-possibility--of a novel is contained within the Archive. I have never thrown away more than the occasional (more or less duplicate) page of typescript. My Archive therefore contains 98 or 99% of all the marks I make on paper as a novelist." For most of these works, the creative process includes early typescript drafts through printer's copies, proofs, production material, and reviews. Occasionally, holograph notes and "scheme cards" are also present.

Series II. Articles includes articles and book reviews, Letter from London, tear sheets from The New Yorker (1990-1994), and typescripts of Barnes's TV criticism published in the Observer (1982-1986).

The Correspondence in Series III dates from 1971-1998 and includes fan mail, publisher's correspondence, and letters from acquaintances and writers including Eric Ambler, Kingsley Amis, Dirk Bogarde, Anthony Burgess, Graham Greene, Elizabeth Hardwick, Michael Horovitz, Arthur Koestler, Philip Larkin, Frances Partridge, Myfanwy Piper, V. S. Pritchett, Dodie Smith, and Auberon Waugh.

The career-related material in Series IV includes articles about Barnes, publicity clippings from 1980-1991, ephemera, and a rather large collection of photographs, mostly taken for publicity purposes.

Numerous editions of Barnes's works received with the collection, mostly foreign imprints, were transferred to the HRC Library, along with his commercially recorded books on tape and tapes of interviews and readings. Included with the books is a special limited edition of Cross-Channel issued on the occasion of Barnes's fiftieth birthday which he inscribed to the HRC.

2006 Acquisition

This addition to the original acquisition of Julian Barnes Papers contains material related to his literary activity between 2002 and 2006, as well as older journalistic writings and correspondence primarily from the 1990s. Contents include his 2006 novel Arthur & George, three works of collected essays and short stories, articles, book reviews, other writings, photographs, and career-related material. This accretion is divided into two series: I. Works, 1996-2006; and II. Correspondence and Other Papers, 1960-2006.

The works in Series I. include research, notes, typescript drafts, proofs, and production material for the novel Arthur & George. For the short story collection, The Lemon Table, there are typescripts, as well as proofs and tear sheets for the short stories originally published in The New Yorker and Granta. Also present are typescripts and proofs for two essay collections, The Pedant in the Kitchen, originally a food column by the same name appearing in the Guardian, and for Something to Declare, comprising essays originally appearing in New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, London Review of Books, New York Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement, and as prefaces in various works. Barnes's "journalism" files contain typescripts of articles, essays, introductions, book reviews, and other writings. Considerable material is present for Alphonse Daudet's In the Land of Pain, as translated, edited, and introduced by Barnes. Similarly, Barnes wrote the introduction and selected stories for My Oedipus Complex and Other Stories by Frank O'Connor. Included are the uncorrected proofs for this work.

Series II. Correspondence and Other Papers dates from 1960, but the bulk of the material falls within the 1990s. The correspondence contains letters from friends Brian and Jean Moore; general correspondence, with letters from Penelope Fitzgerald and Evelyn Waugh; and invitations to Barnes and his wife, Pat Kavanagh, for a wide variety of literary, artistic, and other events. The remainder of the series contains articles about Barnes, book production and publicity material, interviews, a bibliography of Barnes's longer works by Richard Layman, and a French play adaptation of Barnes's short story The Fruit Cage by Daniel Soulier.

2014 Acquisition

This addition contains digital photographs from international publicity appearances that Barnes made in 2006-2008. These files were transferred to the Ransom Center on five optical disks and include photographs from events attended in Argentina, Croatia, and Slovenia. This addition is arranged alphabetically by country. Events in Argentina include a talk and book signing at Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) and appearances at a Buenos Aires public library and restaurant on February 6, 2008. Photos from Croatia are of various talks and a book signing. The Slovenia segment is from a stage adaptation of Talking It Over put on by the Slovenian National Theatre Drama Ljubljana that premiered on November 23, 2007.

Note to Researchers

The inventory for the Julian Barnes Papers is a conflation of two preliminary inventories created in 2002 and 2007 which described two additions to the unprocessed collection, plus later description of electronic files received in 2014. Both of the additions are minimally processed, and the 2006 paper and 2014 electronic files additions were appended to the end of the 2002 inventory. Because both paper additions began the box numbering with Box 1, the 2006 addition is differentiated by adding the letter "a" to the original box number (e.g., Box 1a, Box 2a, etc.). The inventories were combined in 2025 to comply with a new content management system.

Container List Original Acquisition (2001-12-0006-P), 2001 Series I. Works 1 1-2 Holograph notebooks, include plans for books Before She Met Me (1982) 1 3-4 Typescripts 1 and 2 1 5 "Latish draft," corrected typescript 1 6 Dust jackets and related production material