Leon Garfield Collection

Surviving papers of the writer Leon Garfield, consisting of numerous notebooks containing partial and complete manuscript drafts of over 20 of Garfield's published titles, as well as some unpublished material; typescript drafts of four published works and several unpublished works; original artwork for several of Garfield's books, comprising three illustrations by Antony Maitland and one illustration by Fritz Wegner; and a large quantity of reviews and press cuttings relating to Garfield's published works and his career as a writer.

Created by Leon Garfield during the course of his career as a writer.

Some sorting and arrangement of the collection, most notably the notebooks, appears to have been undertaken by Garfield's wife, Vivien Alcock, some time after his death [further information relating to this can be found in the series level description for series LG/01 Notebooks]. There is little evidence for how Garfield himself may have organised his papers, and the fragmented and complex nature of many of his notebooks suggests he did not have a systematic approach.

It has, therefore, been necessary to impose a system of arrangement and the simplest approach has been to divide the material into four series based on record type, as follows:

LG/01 Notebooks

LG/02 Typescripts

LG/03 Artwork

LG/04 Reviews, publicity and awards

All links between files in different series are made clear in the catalogue, at the relevant level. Further information on the arrangement of files within each series can be found at series level.

Accessible to all researchers, by appointment only.

This collection has been appraised, and all duplicate material removed.

This collection, comprising all of Leon Garfield's surviving papers, was put up for sale by his daughter, Jane Garfield, and purchased by Seven Stories in 2009, through Bertram Rota Ltd Booksellers.