A01=Amy Hildreth Chen
Archive acquisitions controversy
Archive bidding wars
Archive funding challenges
Archive investment
Archive market trends
Archive ownership disputes
Archive sales in the digital age
Arthur Miller papers
Author legacy preservation
Author reputation
Author_Amy Hildreth Chen
Authors' archives
Best books on literary archives
Buying and selling archives
Buying author archives
Category=DS
Celebrity author collections
Celebrity authors
Contemporary author archives
Contemporary literary studies
Digital archives vs. physical archives
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Evolution of literary archives
How authors sell their archives
Impact of archive sales
James Baldwin archives
Library acquisitions
Literary archives
Literary research collections
Manuscript valuation
National literary archives
Primary source collections
Primary sources in literature
Private archive collectors
Public interest in literary archives
Public library acquisitions
Rare book dealers
Rare book market
Rare manuscript collections
Research library archives
Selling author papers
Selling literary manuscripts
The business of author papers
The role of archivists
Twentieth-century archives
University archive collections
Product details
- ISBN 9781625344854
- Weight: 310g
- Dimensions: 152 x 231mm
- Publication Date: 30 Jun 2020
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The sale of authors' papers to archives has become big news, with collections from James Baldwin and Arthur Miller fetching record-breaking sums in recent years. Amy Hildreth Chen offers the history of how this multimillion dollar business developed from the mid-twentieth century onward and considers what impact authors, literary agents, curators, archivists, and others have had on this burgeoning economy.
The market for contemporary authors' archives began when research libraries needed to cheaply provide primary sources for the swelling number of students and faculty following World War II. Demand soon grew, and while writers and their families found new opportunities to make money, so too did book dealers and literary agents with the foresight to pivot their businesses to serve living authors. Public interest surrounding celebrity writers had exploded by the late twentieth century, and as Placing Papers illustrates, even the best funded institutions were forced to contend with the facts that acquiring contemporary literary archives had become cost prohibitive and increasingly competitive.
Amy Hildreth Chen is English and communications librarian at the University of Iowa.
