Purchases, 1999 (R14457, R16015); 2015 (15-01-012-P)
Open for research
Liz Murray, 1999; Richard Workman, 2016
Doris Lessing was born in 1919 to English parents who were resident in Persia (now Iran) at the time. Her father, Alfred Tayler, was a bank employee. The family lived in Persia until Doris was five years old, when her father bought a farm in what was then Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Lessing spent the next 25 years in Africa, marrying and divorcing twice and having three children before she took her youngest child, Peter, and moved to England in 1949.
The next year her first novel,
In the 1960s, Lessing came under the influence of Sufi writer and teacher Idries Shah. As a result, her work veered away from realism in
Also unconventional in a different way were the two novels that Lessing wrote and secretly published under the pseudonym Jane Somers--
Lessing collaborated with American composer Philip Glass on operatic versions of two of her novels,
She also produced a significant amount of nonfiction, including
Lessing received many awards in her long career including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007. She died at age 94 in 2013.
Lessing, Doris.
Lessing, Doris.
The Doris Lessing Papers document the English author's creative life through artwork, clippings, correspondence, galley proofs, journal pages, libretti, manuscripts, notes, objects, page proofs, photographs, play scripts, printed material, screenplays, and sound recordings. The focus of the collection is on her professional rather than personal life. The papers are arranged in two series: I. Works, 1943-2008, undated, and II. Personal and Career-Related, 1947-2007, undated.
The Works series represents the majority of the papers, filling 70.5 boxes. It is arranged in five subseries: A. Novels, 1970-2008, undated; B. Short Fiction, 1949-2006, undated; C. Dramatic Works, 1959-2004, undated; D. Poetry, 1943-2005, undated; and E. Nonfiction, 1963-2007, undated.
Lessing's papers were acquired by the Ransom Center in two lots: one accession was assembled under her personal supervision in 1999 and has been available to researchers through a preliminary inventory; the other was acquired under the terms of her will in 2015. The present arrangement re-catalogs the earlier acquisition and combines both accessions. To make it possible for users to identify which accession included a particular item, folders containing material from the 1999 accession are labeled with registration numbers R14457 or R16015; folders containing material from the 2015 accession are not labeled with an accession number.
The papers clearly illustrate Lessing's usual working method. After some preliminary
handwritten notes, she composed her first draft at the typewriter, making a carbon copy.
Then she revised both copies by hand before sending one to a typist for retyping, requesting
an original and usually several carbon copies or, in later years, word-processed printouts.
This process of editing and retyping was often repeated several times before she submitted
the manuscript to her publisher. This guide refers to each of these stages of the manuscript
as a
In the process of revising a draft, Lessing sometimes re-typed longer passages on small
pieces of paper rather than writing them by hand (she recognized that her handwriting was
difficult to read, saying people told her it was
Lessing frequently typed her drafts on the back of previously used paper; sometimes incoming correspondence, unfinished outgoing correspondence, and manuscripts of other works. No attempt was made to identify and catalog this material.
Often Lessing filed correspondence to and from her typist, publisher, or others with her manuscripts. Such letters were left in place and arranged in chronological order. Significant individual correspondents are included in the Index of Correspondents at the end of this guide.
Lessing's original folders are preserved and filed behind the material they originally enclosed.
Subseries A. Novels contains material for all of Lessing's novels beginning with
The novels are arranged in alphabetical order by title.
Included are drafts of an uncompleted novel, The Memorymakers, which was intended for serial publication in
The bound proof copy of
While most of Lessing's papers were not particularly well organized beyond being grouped by title, the manuscript of
Subseries B. Short Fiction is arranged in alphabetical order by title, with individual stories and book-length collections grouped separately.
Subseries C. Dramatic works includes stage and musical plays, screenplays for television and film, and opera librettos. Many of the works in this section had not been published when this guide was written. They are arranged in a single alphabetical list by title.
Many of the manuscripts in this section bear the imprint of Gregson & Wigan, who were apparently her theatrical agents until the firm was purchased by EMI in 1970. Presumably these scripts were returned to her at that time.
At some point (perhaps when they were still in the possession of her agent) several of Lessing's manuscripts of dramatic works were stained by an unidentified liquid that permeated the pages and their folders. These manuscripts have been sleeved in plastic. Patrons using them may wish to consult Ransom Center staff about precautions they can take to avoid direct contact with these materials.
Subseries D. Poetry is the smallest section of Lessing's works. Most of her poems were written early in her career, though she occasionally wrote and published verse as late as 2005. Lessing herself labeled a folder "The ones I like," and that arrangement is preserved here. An attempt was made to arrange drafts in chronological order during processing.
Subseries E. Nonfiction contains articles, essays, journalism, reviews, prefaces, and other writing grouped as either individual pieces or books. Many of the individual manuscripts in this section lack titles; where the same piece appeared in the anthology Time Bites, the title found there is the one under which the piece is cataloged; otherwise, the title written on the manuscript, if any, was chosen. Untitled and uncompleted pieces are grouped at the end.
After her 1986 visit to Pakistan to learn about refugees from the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Lessing wrote about her experiences in two simultaneous publications: an article,
Series II. Personal and Career-Related encompasses five boxes and is divided into two subseries: A. Personal, 1947-2007, undated, and B. Career-Related, 1956-2002, undated.
The Personal subseries contains some loose pages with dated, journal-like entries. A portion of these describes Lessing's experience taking the drug mescaline in 1963. These pages were originally placed by Lessing among her poems, but since no connection with any of the poems could be discovered, they were moved to this section.
The Personal subseries also contains correspondence that was not filed in conjunction with any particular manuscript or other group of papers.
The Career-Related subseries contains clippings, photocopies, and printed publications containing reviews of Lessing's work, profiles, and interviews, as well as documents and correspondence relating to her travels to give readings and talks and to receive awards.
For additional materials related to Doris Lessing at the Ransom Center, see manuscript holdings for: Clancy Sigal, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Joan Rodker, John Osborne and Helen Dawson, Peter Owen, Ltd., Norman Mailer, and Tom Stoppard.
Other repositories with holdings of Lessing's papers include the British Archive for Contemporary Writing at the University of East Anglia and the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Tulsa.
One audio recording was transferred to the Ransom Center Sound Recordings Collection.
One original print was transferred to the Ransom Center Art Collection.
Two books were transferred to the Ransom Center Library and are listed in the University
of Texas
A small number of miscellaneous objects was transferred to the Ransom Center Personal Effects Collection.