Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library collection on Thom Gunn
Overview
Contains correspondence from Thom Gunn, photographs, and ephemera related to Gunn's work as a poet.
Dates
- Creation: 1954-1993
Language of Materials
English
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material. Collection is open for research.
This collection is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. Retrieval requires advance notice. Readers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine what material is offsite and retrieval policies and times.
Extent
.65 linear feet (2 boxes)Contains correspondence from Thom Gunn to individuals such as David Gascoyne, Colin Huggett, Alan Clodd, and others, as well as two copies of scripts by Gunn for the Third Programme in the 1960s. Further contains ephemera, especially programs and flyers advertising Gunn's public appearances and readings, as well as publications.
Biographical / Historical
Thom Gunn (1929-2004) was born Thomson William Gunn in Gravesend, Kent, England, to journalists. He studied English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1953. He published his first collection of verse, Fighting Terms, in 1954. That same year, he emigrated to the United States to teach writing at Stanford University and live with his partner, Mike Kitay. Gunn later taught at the University of California at Berkeley. His early poetry was associated with The Movement and later with the work of Ted Hughes. Volumes of poetry by Gunn include Touch, Jack’s Straw Castle, The Passages of Joy, >The Man With Night Sweats, Shelf Life, Collected Poems, and Boss Cupid, among others.
Gunn was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature in 2003, and also received the Levinson Prize, and Arts Council of Great Britain Award, a Rockefeller Award, the W.H. Smith Award, the PEN (Los Angeles) Prize for Poetry, fellowships from the Guggeheim and Macarthur foundations, among other awards and fellowships. He received the inaugural Triangle Award for Gay Poetry in 2001 for Boss Cupid; the award was renamed the Thom Gunn Award following his death in 2004.
Arrangement
Collection has been minimally processed. Materials have not been arranged.
Physical Location
Harvard Depository
Immediate Source of Acquisition
2016M-64. Deposit of Julio Santo Domingo III in April 2012.
Processing Information
Processed by Betts Coup, 2019.
- Title
- Gunn, Thom. Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library collection on Thom Gunn, 1954-1993 (MS Am 3112): Guide.
- Status
- completed
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard University.
- Date
- 2019 August 7
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou03243
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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