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Harry Ransom Center
Harry ransom center 2012.jpg
The Harry Ransom Center, June 2012
Country US
Type Academic library
Established 1957
Location Austin, Texas
Coordinates 30°17′04″N 97°44′28″W / 30.28444°N 97.74111°W / 30.28444; -97.74111

The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the purpose of advancing the study of the arts and humanities. The Ransom Center houses 36 million literary manuscripts, one million rare books, five million photographs, and more than 100,000 works of art.

The center has a reading room for scholars and galleries which display rotating exhibitions of works and objects from the collections. In the 2015–16 academic year, the center hosted nearly 6,000 research visits resulting in the publication of over 145 books.

History

Harry Ransom founded the Humanities Research Center in 1957 with the ambition of expanding the rare books and manuscript holdings of the University of Texas. He acquired the Edward Alexander Parsons Collection, the T. Edward Hanley Collection, and the Norman Bel Geddes Collection.

Ransom was only the official director of the center from 1958 to 1961, but he directed and presided over a period of great expansion in the collections until his resignation in 1971 as chancellor of the University of Texas System. The center moved into its current building in 1972.

F. Warren Roberts was the official director from 1961 to 1976 and acquired the Helmut Gernsheim Collection of photographs, the archives of D. H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, and Evelyn Waugh, and in 1968 the Carlton Lake Collection.

After Roberts's tenure, John Payne and then Carlton Lake served as interim directors from 1976 to 1980. It was during this time (in 1978) that the center acquired its complete copy of the Gutenberg Bible.

In 1980, the center hired Decherd Turner as director. Turner acquired the Giorgio Uzielli Collection of Aldine editions, the Anne Sexton archive, the Robert Lee Wolff Collection of 19th-century fiction, the Pforzheimer Collection, the David O. Selznick archive, the Gloria Swanson archive, and the Ernest Lehman Collection. Upon Decherd Turner's retirement in 1988, Thomas F. Staley became director of the center. Staley had acquired the Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers, a copy of the Plantin Polyglot Bible, and more than 100 literary archives. In September 2013, Stephen Enniss was appointed director of the Ransom Center. Enniss was formerly the Head Librarian of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Under Enniss, the Ransom Center has continued to collect several archives, including Kazuo Ishiguro, Arthur Miller and Ian McEwan.

In 1983, the institution's name was changed from the Humanities Research Center to the Harry Ransom Center.

Notable collections

First photo
Nicéphore Niépce's View from the Window at Le Gras (c. 1826) is on permanent display in the main lobby

Two prominent items in the Ransom Center's collections are a Gutenberg Bible (one of only 21 complete copies known to exist) and Nicéphore Niépce's c. 1826 View from the Window at Le Gras, the first successful permanent photograph from nature. Both of these objects are on permanent display in the main lobby.

Beyond these, the center houses many culturally important documents and artifacts. Particular strengths include modern literature, performing arts, and photography. Besides the Gutenberg Bible and the photograph, notable holdings include:

Literature

Extensive manuscript collections of George Atherton Aitken, Julia Alvarez, Julian Barnes, Marthe Bibesco, Elizabeth Bowen, T. C. Boyle, Lewis Carroll, J. M. Coetzee, Billy Collins, Aleister Crowley, Don DeLillo, Gabriel García Márquez, Erle Stanley Gardner, Graham Greene, Kazuo Ishiguro, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, T. E. Lawrence, Doris Lessing, Norman Mailer, Carson McCullers, Ian McEwan, McSweeney's, Brian Moore, Anne Sexton, David Foster Wallace, and T.H. White.

George Aiken's original manuscript for his stage adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin
George L. Aiken's original manuscript for his stage adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852. From the George C. Howard and Family Collection, Harry Ransom Center.

Theatre and performing arts

Film and television

Art

  • Two paintings by Frida Kahlo: Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940) and Still Life (with Parrot and Fruit)
  • A complete set of Pablo Picasso's 1930–1937 Vollard Suite
  • A she-wolf statue carved in stone and coated with gold leaf (now worn off) by Eric Gill, creator of Gill Sans typeface
  • Busts of various writers (on display in the lobby and reading room)
  • Large holdings in art by writers and portraits of literary figures
  • Facsimile of the 1908 piano suite Gaspard de la nuit composed by Maurice Ravel

History

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