Stanford University Buys Steinbeck Letters,
Manuscripts, Photographs
Stanford University Libraries announced August 4 that the university has purchased a major collection of letters and manuscripts by John Steinbeck, spanning 100 years of family history and including unpublished juvenilia and photographs.
Acquired partly with a gift from the Wells Fargo Foundation, the collection will be named for the foundation and join Stanford’s other holdings of Steinbeck books and manuscripts in the Department of Special Collections. University Librarian Michael A. Keller noted that Stanford already has one of the most important Steinbeck archives in the country and the addition “significantly strengthens Stanford’s reputation as a premier repository for research materials on John Steinbeck.”
The collection was purchased from the family of Steinbeck’s sister, Esther Steinbeck Rogers, for an undisclosed price. The material will be available to scholars beginning August 9, when Stanford finally reopens the renovated west wing of the Green Library, heavily damaged by the Loma Prieta earthquake a decade ago.
John Steinbeck was a native of Salinas, California, and attended Stanford in the 1920s. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962.
Posted August 9, 1999.
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