Harry Ransom Center
The Harry Ransom Center is one of the world’s foremost institutions for literary and cultural research. It offers resources in a number of disciplines and periods, but its principal strength is in its collections of modern and contemporary British, American, and French literature. These collections contain not only rare editions but also prepublication materials, including authors’ original notes, revised manuscripts, corrected galley proofs and page proofs, as well as letters and other personal and professional documents. Important collections exist also in photography, performing arts, and film. The center houses about a million books, forty-two million manuscripts, five million photographs, and more than one hundred thousand works of art.
Book collections include the libraries of James Joyce and Evelyn Waugh, the Wolff Collection of Nineteenth-Century Fiction, the VanderPoel Collection of Charles Dickens, three Shakespeare First Folios, and the Pforzheimer Collection of English Literature, 1475–1700. The Ransom Center’s most valuable book is the Gutenberg Bible. Writers particularly well represented in the center’s manuscript collections include J. M. Coetzee, Gabriel García Márquez, Graham Greene, Lillian Hellman, D. H. Lawrence, Doris Lessing, Norman Mailer, David Mamet, Carson McCullers, Ian McEwan, Anne Sexton, George Bernard Shaw, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Tom Stoppard, David Foster Wallace, and Tennessee Williams.
The photography collections include the works of more than twelve hundred photographers from the 1820s to the present. Large collections of theatrical designs, film manuscripts, and other materials are found in the Norman Bel Geddes collection, the David O. Selznick collection, and the Gloria Swanson archive.
Art collections include drawings, prints, and paintings of and by English, American, and French writers, including E. E. Cummings, D. H. Lawrence, and Jean Cocteau, as well as works of art by Frida Kahlo, Eric Gill, Georges Rouault, and others.
Music collections include opera librettos from 1600 to 1920; manuscript scores of French composers Ravel, Roussel, Dukas, and Debussy; the archive of American composer Paul Bowles; and the collection of jazz historian Ross Russell.
The Ransom Center invites use by scholars engaged in research in the humanities. University faculty members, staff members, and students are eligible to use the collections, as are other researchers. The Ransom Center is a non-circulating library. Researchers wishing to consult the collections must present a photo ID, complete an online application form, and agree to abide by the Ransom Center’s rules and regulations.
Ransom Center books and some archival materials are represented in the online catalog of the University Libraries. Principal access to manuscript collections is provided through online finding aids. Photography, film, performing arts, and art materials are represented in online finding aids, but it is recommended that users consult the appropriate curator to locate materials in these areas.
Patrons may access Ransom Center materials in the second-floor Reading and Viewing Rooms. The earliest surviving photograph, taken in 1826 or 1827, and the Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed with movable type, are on display in the center’s lobby, and the first-floor galleries feature rotating exhibitions of items from the literary, photographic, and art collections.
Hours of operation for both the exhibition galleries and reading room are available on the Ransom Center’s Web site or by calling (512) 471-8944.