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Nadine Gordimer:

An Inventory of Her Short Stories and Novel at the Harry Ransom Center

Creator Gordimer, Nadine, 1923-2014
Title Nadine Gordimer Short Stories and Novel Manuscripts
Dates: 1958-1965
Extent: .5 Box (.21 linear feet)
Abstract: This collection contains typescripts for thirteen short stories and one novel.
Call Number: Manuscript Collection MS-01661
Language: English.
Access Open for research

Administrative Information


Acquisition Gift of Joseph Jones, 1962
Processed by Katie Salzmann, 1995; Sarah Demb, 1996
Repository:

Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Biographical Sketch


Nadine Gordimer, novelist and short story writer, was born in Springs, South Africa, in 1923. She spent her childhood in Transvaal, and began writing at an early age, publishing her first short story, "Come Again Tomorrow," when she was 15. At 21, Gordimer briefly attended Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg where she was exposed to the social and political atmosphere of South Africa, which would become the focus of her works. Gordimer married twice--first in 1949 to G. Gavron, with whom she had one daughter, and then to Reinhold Cassirer in 1954. They had one son.
Gordimer remained in Johannesburg and her works reflect the racially turbulent themes of South Africa's history. She published fifteen novels. Her first was the semi-autobiographical The Lying Days (1953), which was followed by A World of Strangers (1958), Occasion for Loving (1963), The Late Bourgeois World (1966), A Guest of Honour (1971), The Conservationist (1974), Burger's Daughter (1979), July's People (1981), A Sport of Nature (1987), My Son's Story (1990), None to Accompany Me (1994), The House Gun (1998), The Pickup (2001), Get a Life (2005), and No Time Like the Present (2012).
Gordimer's short stories have been published in various magazines such as the New Yorker, Harpers, and the Yale Review. They have also been published in several collections, including Face to Face (1949), Friday's Footprint (1960), Jump: And Other Stories (1991), Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black (2007), and Life Times: Stories (2011).
Nadine Gordimer received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. She died on July 14, 2014.

Scope and Contents


The Nadine Gordimer collection, 1958-1965, consists of fourteen corrected typescripts, including thirteen short stories and one novel. There is no material relating to Gordimer's personal life or correspondence. The works are arranged alphabetically.
The collection contains material relating to Gordimer's early work as a South African novelist and short story writer. It includes a draft of Gordimer's second novel, A World of Strangers (1958), and the thirteen short stories that have been collected and published in Friday's Footprint (1960) and Not for Publication (1965).
As well as providing Gordimer's impressions of South Africa, the corrected typescripts offer insight into Gordimer's writing process. A World of Strangers is prefaced by an author's plan that outlines the novel's plot.

Index Terms


Subjects
Short stories, South African.
Novelists, South African.
South African fiction.

Nadine Gordimer Collection--Folder List