[ilds] Durrell in Canada

[James Gifford]

Hi Bruce,

Indeed, Ray donated his collection to the University of Toronto when he 
retired -- it houses an extraordinary special collections but doesn't 
have Durrell mss.  I went through it a little over ten years ago now. 
It includes "almost" everything by Durrell in print in English. 
Victoria and Yale have comparable print collections in North America.

Victoria and UCLA would likely be the strongest places for the letters 
to go, but who knows how they're prioritizing their budgets right now. 
UCLA has the major Durrell-Miller letter collection, via Miller.  UVic 
benefits from having several ancillary collections in addition to their 
Durrell fonds: the Miller and Perles fonds are extensive, and James 
Brigham's papers also went there, including his copies of mss. and 
collection of variants for the Collected Poems book (as well as all the 
materials for the checklist).  That said, I always try to remind 
students that the most interesting materials are often not in the 
author's own collection -- they're in another author's inbox or 
institutional repositories...  And even in Victoria, a very large 
portion of the Special Collections is still being catalogued, with most 
materials not listed online, which is fairly common in my experience.

Carbondale obviously has the largest collection of mss., but it doesn't 
have an international airport (the nearest is over 100 miles away) and 
doesn't appear to be acquiring new materials either.

All best,
James

On 2015-11-15 2:29 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
> True, Victoria, BC, a beautiful city, is off the beaten track.  I guess
> it would be nice to consolidate Durrell's materials in a central
> location such as the British Museum in London, but the Canadians have
> done truly extraordinary work to advance Durrellian studies and have
> earned the right to be a major research center or centers for his work.
>   I believe the late Ray Morrison's archive is at the U of Toronto.  The
> journal Mosaic regularly publishes articles on Durrell.  I venture to
> say Durrell's reputation is higher in Canada than it is in the UK.
>
> Bruce