CREATIVE WRITING COLLECTION

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The Creative Writing Collection is a miscellany of more than 300 manuscripts and proof copies by approximately 130 authors, intended to show various stages of the creative writing process. Although the contents for each title varies, a typical entry may contain one or more drafts, usually with revisions, and one or more revised proofs. Much of the material was collected in the nineteen fifties, so many of the manuscripts are from that time.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was the inspiration for this collection. When she donated her own manuscripts to the the University of Florida, she expressed the belief that being able to study the development of the text from the manuscript to the published version was the same as watching a writer at work and would be of use to developing writers. She encouraged other writers, especially Floridians, to donate their manuscripts. The Creative Writing Collection supplements the Libraries numerous collections of individual writers, especially Floridians, including Rawlings, Zora Neale Hurston, John D. MacDonald, Edith Pope, Lillian Smith and poets Hans Juergensen, Duane Locke, and Hannah Kahn, among others.

The most extensively represented authors include Taylor Caldwell, Pat Frank, Andrew D. Lytle, and Jacksonville physician-novelist Frank G. Slaughter. Major  fiction writers include Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Jesse Hill Ford, Vance Bourjaily and James Branch Cabell. Poets include Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Donald Justice, Howard Moss, Karl Shapiro, William Carlos William, Robinson Jeffers, and James Merrill. The collection also includes works of criticism, including manuscripts of  Hugh Kenner and Allen Tate. Many lesser known Florida writers and Florida based manuscripts are included. The collection include the archives of several issue of Discovery, the 1950's literary magazine devoted to new writers.

Individual titles are included in WebLuis.