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Heiney (Donald) papers
MS.F.004
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Table of contents
Contributing Institution:
Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Libraries
Title: Donald Heiney papers
Creator:
Heiney, Donald
Creator:
Harris, MacDonald
Identifier/Call Number: MS.F.004
Physical Description:
18.8 Linear Feet
(37 boxes, 1 flat box) and 4.5 unprocessed linear feet
Date (inclusive): 1947-1993
Abstract: This collection contains the professional papers of Donald Heiney, documenting his work as a novelist and critic. It includes
manuscripts, unpublished drafts and plans, correspondence, notebooks, proofs, newspaper clippings, photographs, and research
files relating to his novels and critical works.
Language of Material:
English
.
Processed components of the collection are open for research. Unprocessed additions may contain restricted materials. Please
contact the Department of Special Collections and Archives in advance to request access.
Property rights reside with the University of California. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their
heirs. For permission to reproduce or to publish, please contact the University Archivist.
Donald Heiney papers. MS-F004. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Date accessed.
For the benefit of current and future researchers, please cite any additional information about sources consulted in this
collection, including permanent URLs, item or folder descriptions, and box/folder locations.
Gift of Donald Heiney, 1978-1988. Gift of Ann Heiney, 2015.
Preliminary processing by Special Collections and Archives staff, ca. 1996. Further processing by Carole McEwan in 2011.
Donald Heiney was born in South Pasadena, California on September 7, 1921. He spent World War II as a merchant marine and
a naval officer in Europe and the South Pacific. After the war, he received a B.A. (1948), from the University of Redlands
and an M.A. (1949) and Ph.D.(1952) from the University of Southern California where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He continued
at USC as a post-doctoral lecturer until 1953 when he joined the faculty at the University of Utah. During this period in
the fifties and early sixties, he wrote and published scholarly material in the field of comparative literature, including
two university books on Italian fiction. He also published translations including, among others, works by Rilke and Italo
Calvino. In 1965, Heiney joined the faculty of the University of California, Irvine as a full professor. Along with Hazard
Adams and James B. Hall, he was instrumental in establishing the Department of English and Comparative Literature in the pioneer
years of the campus, and served as director of the Program on Comparative Literature (1965-1970). He traveled frequently
in Europe and in 1973-74 he served as visiting professor at the Universite de Paris III (La Sorbonne), lecturing in American
literature and also demonstrating the teaching of creative writing. Upon returning from France, he decided to devote himself
exclusively to his fiction writing although he continued to teach at UC Irvine in the Master of Fine Arts, Program in writing
until his retirement in 1991. In 1986, he received The Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award from his academic colleagues.
At the same time he was beginning his academic career, he embarked on his career as a fiction writer, selling his first story
to the national magazine
Esquire in 1947. He used the pseudonym MacDonald Harris for his fiction writing. As he explained for this biography in
World Authors 1985-1990:
"My legal name is Donald Heiney. The use of a fictional pseudonym, which I began with my earliest stories, has provided a
convenient form of controlled schizophrenia which has enabled me to cling to an artistic temperament and a creative outlook
even though I've lived most of my life in a banaly bourgeois atmosphere. The problem for a writer in those circumstances,
I think, is to resist the forces that attempt to make him normal and to remain a little crazy. In this, at least, I think
I have succeeded. If I could characterize the development of my writing over the years, I would say that it has become odder
and more idiosyncratic, and at the same time more accessible to larger number of readers. I find that a difficult achievement,
and one that I am pleased with."
He published sixteen major novels:
Private Demons (1961),
Mortal Leap (1964),
Treplaff (1968),
Bull Fire (1973),
The Balloonist (1976),
Yukiko (1977),
Pandora's Galley (1979),
The Treasure of Sainte Foy (1980),
Herma (1981),
Screenplay (1983),
Tenth 1984),
The Little People (1986),
Glowstone (1987),
Hemingway's Suitcase (1990),
Glad Rags (1991),
A Portrait of my Desire (1993)
The Balloonist was nominated for a National Book Award in 1976. He received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute
of Arts and Letters in 1982, and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Philosophical Society.
In 1985 he received a special citation from PEN for his novel Tenth. Many of his novels were widely reprinted and translated.
Heiney married Ann Borgman in 1948 and had two sons: Paul, born in 1954, and Conrad, in 1964. He died of a heart attack in
his home in Newport Beach, California on July 24, 1993.
Collection Scope and Content Summary
This collection contains the professional papers of Donald Heiney, documenting his work as a novelist and critic. It includes
manuscripts, unpublished drafts and plans, correspondence, notebooks, proofs, newspaper clippings, photographs, and research
files relating to his novels and critical works. The papers are particularly rich with correspondence with his publishers.
This collection is arranged in 2 series:
- Series 1. Fiction writings, 1947-1990
- Series 2. Nonfiction writings, 1947-1989
The collection also contains one unprocessed addition:
- Accession 2017-004. Unprocessed addition, 1949-1993. 4.5 linear feet
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Book reviews
Novels
Italian literature -- History and criticism
American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
Authors
Novelists, American -- 20th century -- Archives
Galley proofs (Publishing)
Short stories
Microfilms
Authors and publishers -- United States -- Correspondence -- 20th century
University of California, Irvine -- Faculty -- Archives
Heiney, Donald -- Archives