British Library acquires 68 boxes of A.S. Byatt's notebooks and letters
The archive, newly opened to researchers, traces the career of the Booker-winning author of Possession from her earliest doubts as a young writer.
The British Library has acquired an archive of 68 boxes of notebooks, letters and diaries belonging to A.S. Byatt, according to the Guardian. The material documents the working methods of a writer known for the depth of research behind her fiction, culminating in the 1990 novel Possession: A Romance, which won the Booker prize.
Among the papers is a diary entry from September 1956, when Byatt was 20 and still uncertain of her vocation. "Do I take myself seriously as a writer?" she wrote. "No, I think not." The same year, on her birthday, she set down a different note: "Today, I know I can do anything. But not yet," the Guardian reports.
The Guardian frames the collection as a window into how Byatt assembled the raw material of her novels, built over decades of notebooks and correspondence. No further detail on the archive's contents, its availability to readers, or an opening date has been given in the source material.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.
