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Finding Aid to the Thom Gunn Papers, 1930-2004, bulk 1950-2004
BANC MSS 2006/235
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Table of contents
Collection Title: Thom Gunn papers
Date (inclusive): 1930-2004,
Date (bulk): bulk 1950-2004
Collection Number: BANC MSS 2006/235
Creators :
Gunn, Thom
Extent:
Number of containers: 11 cartons, 1 box, 2 oversize boxes, 22 oversize folders, and 6 volumes
Linear feet: 19.15
Repository: The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California, 94720-6000
Phone: (510) 642-6481
Fax: (510) 642-7589
Email: bancref@library.berkeley.edu
URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/
Abstract: The Thom Gunn Papers consist of correspondence, personal papers (diaries and scrapbooks detailing his life and career), notebooks
of poetry and prose, writings (both poetry and prose), professional papers, teaching materials, writings by other poets and
authors, and a small collection of alternative (mostly gay) newspapers.
Languages Represented: Collection materials are in English
Physical Location: Many of the Bancroft Library collections are stored offsite and advance notice may be required for use. For current information
on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
Collection is open for research.
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in writing to the Head
of Public Services, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000. Consent is given on behalf of The
Bancroft Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission from the copyright
owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright owner. See:
http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/reference/permissions.html .
Restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of digital files is restricted to research
and educational purposes.
[Identification of item], Thom Gunn Papers, BANC MSS 2006/235, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
There are no alternate forms of this collection.
Additional Notes on Collection:
BANC MSS 87/1 c, Thom Gunn poetry notebooks, 1968-1973 [Notebook numbers: I - XIV] were incorporated into this collection.
Thom Gunn manuscripts of poems, 1952-1984, BANC MSS C-H 138
Thom Gunn letters, 1968-1969, BANC MSS 71/81 c
Thom Gunn letters : San Francisco, Calif., to John Haffenden, 1979-1980, BANC MSS 2007/24
Belle Randall Collection of Thom Gunn Letters, BANC MSS 2008/252
Photographs from the Thom Gunn papers [graphic]. ca. 1950-ca. 2000, BANC PIC 2008.063-PIC
Edward DeCelle papers, 1969-2001, BANC MSS 2005/185 c
Jess papers, 1941-2004 (bulk 1962-1997), BANC MSS 2006/203
Josephine Miles papers, 1911-1986, BANC MSS 86/107 c
Collage from the office walls of poet Thom Gunn, BANC PIC 2012.056
Printed materials have been transferred to the book collection of The Bancroft Library.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Gunn, Thom--Archives
Faculty papers.
Manuscripts for publication.
Photographs.
Scrapbooks.
Poems.
University of California, Berkeley. Dept. of English
The Thom Gunn papers were purchased by The Bancroft Library on December 2, 2006.
No additions are expected.
Arranged to the folder level.
Processed by Dean Smith in 2007-2008.
Thom Gunn [Thomas William Gunn] was born in Gravesend, England in 1929. His father, Herbert Smith, and his mother, Ann Charlotte
Thompson Gunn, were both journalists. His parents divorced when he was nine. At the age of 15, Gunn and his younger brother
Ander found their mother dead from suicide. Gunn served in the British Army for two years, from 1948 to 1950. After serving
in the army, Gunn lived in Paris for a year and began to write seriously. He then attended Trinity College at Cambridge, where
he focused on writing poetry.
Gunn's first collection of poems,
Fighting Terms, was published in 1954. It was this same year he met his lover and life-partner of 40 years, Mike Kitay, who followed him
to the States; the two settled in San Francisco. His adopted home in America soon became an essential part of his work. In
a
San Francisco Chronicle interview, Gunn said coming to America "changed everything for me."
Gunn pursued graduate studies at Stanford University with poet Yvor Winters from 1954 to 1958. Winters was to become a second
father figure to Gunn, though it was a difficult relationship as Winters rejected all that Gunn wrote after 1958, calling
his poetry "journalism." Gunn published his second collection of poems,
The Sense of Movement, in 1957.
Gunn was offered a teaching job at the University of California, Berkeley in 1958 and left his graduate studies at Stanford,
never to finish his doctorate. Aside from occasional trips to England and a year teaching in San Antonio, Texas, Gunn taught
at Berkeley and lived in San Francisco until his death in 2004. What is frequently regarded as his best-known early collection
of poems,
My Sad Captains, was published in 1961. The ensuing 1960s and '70s were to see Gunn partaking in the counter-cultures of the hippie movement
and gay liberation.
Gunn's poetry is recognized as defying any kind of easy categorization, and it was his use of LSD during the '60s that opened
vistas to new possibilities in form and subject matter in his work. This newfound freedom of expression was explored in books
of poems such as,
Moly (1971) and
Jack Straw's Castle (1976). Despite a lack of signature style, Gunn received numerous awards and prizes throughout his career, including: a Guggenheim
Fellowship in 1971, a coveted MacArthur Fellowship Prize in 1993, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit
in 1998.
Often being described as a gay poet, Gunn was to write honestly and unsentimentally about all aspects of gay life; but his
themes were of wide enough interest to appeal to a broad readership beyond the gay community. As Gunn himself described in
a
San Francisco Examiner interview in 1998, "Obviously, I am a gay writer because I write about gay themes, but I also write about other things and
I don't want to be restricted in the way that somebody would be called a landscape painter or a writer of boys stories. I
don't think I write just one kind of poem."
Gunn was to lose many friends during the onset of AIDS in the 1980s. This loss was voiced movingly, though in his characteristically
unsentimental manner, in the collection of poems,
The Man with Night Sweats (1992). Almost a decade later, with AIDS having shifted in the States from frightening epidemic to managed disease, Gunn
explored the theme of Eros in all its sexual guises in
Boss Cupid (2000).
Throughout his long career Gunn's work made little of the distinctions between high and low art, finding no subject taboo;
as a result, his poetry has been praised for its contemporary and immediate qualities. Although embracing popular culture,
Gunn delved deeper, with great subtlety and wit, than the surface qualities of Pop. As Gunn explained, "People tend to think
poetry as existing on a different plane than the novel or nonfiction, that it is necessarily mystical or spiritual in some
undefined way. But of course it's everything."
Scope and Content of Collection
The Thom Gunn Papers consist of correspondence, personal papers (diaries and scrapbooks detailing his life and career), notebooks
of poetry and prose, writings (both poetry and prose), professional papers, teaching materials, writings by other poets and
authors, and a small collection of alternative (mostly gay) newspapers.
The correspondence is divided into three sub-series: Letters from Thom Gunn, General Correspondence, and Wall Collage Correspondence.
Letters from Thom Gunn is primarily his correspondence to John Holmstrom with a small amount of miscellany. The General Correspondence
is fairly substantive and includes letters to Gunn from many notable literary figures. Wall Collage Correspondence consists
of photocopies of correspondence and notes found on postcards, greeting cards, etc. found in Thom Gunn's wall collage in his
home study.
Gunn's personal papers are divided into three sub-series: Diaries, Scrapbooks, and Personal Miscellany. There are small clutch
of diaries written in Gunn's small, tight handwriting in a brief notational manner. But it is the six volumes of scrapbooks
that capture visually, and with judicious use of letters, photographs and ephemera, the arc of his life both personally and
professionally, and the evolution of gay culture from the 1950s through the mid-70s. The series concludes with a small amount
a personal miscellany that includes address books, a few artworks and portraits of Gunn, and gay ephemera mostly from the
1980s and 90s.
The notebooks are divided into three sub-series: Poetry Notebooks, Prose Notebooks, and Other Notebooks. The Poetry Notebooks
are an incredible view into the working mind of a poet and detail the many revisions Gunn exacted upon his poems. A previous
collection of Gunn's early Poetry Notebooks (BANC MSS 87/1 c, Thom Gunn poetry notebooks, 1968-1973 [Notebook numbers: I -
XIV]) were incorporated into this collection, thus reuniting and making a complete run from 1967-1997. The Prose Notebooks
are few and many undated. Both the Poetry and Prose Notebooks contained many loose pages slipped in throughout; these pages
were removed and foldered separately in order found and follow each respective notebook so as to minimize wear and tear. The
series concludes with Other Notebooks which fall outside the scope of the previous two sub-series.
The writings of Gunn are divided into nine sub-series: Poetry, Broadsides; Poetry, Collected Poems; Poetry, Other Poems; Prose,
Anthology; Prose, Criticism; Prose, Essays; Prose, Fiction; Prose, Lectures; and Prose, Other. All writings are organized
first hierarchically, then by title, and then chronologically. Most of the writings, both poetry and prose, represent finished/published
works or works that are being prepared for publication (printing galleys, proofs, etc.). The few drafts of works are mainly
to be found in the Prose sub-series.
Gunn's professional papers are divided into four sub-series: Awards, Publicity, Poetry Readings Materials, and Professional
Miscellany. The series is arranged first hierarchically, then alphabetically, and then chronologically. The sub-series Awards
represents his achievements from the mid-80s to the year before his death in 2003. Publicity covers a variety of subjects
that illustrate Gunn's influence in both popular and academic media, i.e. publication announcements, reviews, articles, critical
studies (of Gunn's work) among other items. Poetry Reading Materials includes flyers and programs of readings Gunn gave as
well as several programs of other poets, and the copious, if not exhaustive, list of poems that Gunn had read at various readings
and copies of his poems that he annotated for the same. Professional Miscellany includes such items as Gunn's chronology and
curriculum vitae, as well as an issue of
Bulletin of Bibliography devoted to Gunn and various symposia and exhibition materials that featured Gunn's poetry.
Gunn's papers regarding teaching are divided into two sub-series: Course Materials and Teaching Miscellany which are arranged
numerically, then hierarchically, and then chronologically. Course Materials are syllabi, exam guides, lecture notes, and
course readers for the various courses Gunn taught from the 1980s through 90s. Teaching Miscellany represents papers devoted
to Gunn's academic appointment at the University of California at Berkeley, i.e. his curriculum vitae, biography for academic
personnel, annual supplement to his bio-bibliography, promotion and merit increase materials. This series is rounded out with
miscellaneous papers that fall outside his teaching appointment at U.C. Berkeley.
The series Writings by Others is arranged alphabetically and then chronologically, and contains the numerous writings by various
authors and poets, both friends and colleagues, sent to Gunn either for review or as a gift.
The Newspaper Collection, arranged alphabetically and then chronologically, represents various alternative papers, mostly
published for the gay community, that Gunn had collected for various personal and professional reasons.