Events - Event View

Ever wonder what happens to the personal papers of famous authors? How do biographers unearth those juicy secrets of their private lives?

This presentation will tell behind-the-scenes stories of how collections of the personal papers of five authors – Charles Bukowski, Octavia E. Butler, Christopher Isherwood, Hilary Mantel, and Paul Theroux – were acquired by The Huntington Library, all in the opening years of the twenty-first century.  The Huntington is one of the world’s foremost private research libraries, located in San Marino, a suburb of Los Angeles. Speaker Sara S. “Sue” Hodson, retired curator of literary manuscripts, and a staff member for 38 years, acquired these collections for the library, and she will tell the untold stories of the various ways these collections came to be housed at The Huntington.