Personal Effects
Pipe owned by J. Frank Dobie
Personal effects collection
- De Niro, Robert (1943- ). Personal Effects, 1967-2005
In addition to the books, manuscripts, letters, and photographs that typically make up an individual's archive, the Ransom Center occasionally receives personal articles. Take, for instance, the letter opener belonging to the prolific playwright and letter-writer George Bernard Shaw, the lapis lazuli seal given to D. H. Lawrence by Lady Ottoline Morrell, or the hair brooch and mother-of-pearl compact given by Edgar Allan Poe to Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton, the childhood sweetheart he courted during the last year of his life. These evocative objects extend our knowledge of the owners and their relationships with others.
Some of the figures represented in the personal effects collection are Alice Adams, Aubrey Beardsley, Lee Blessing, E. E. Cummings, Robert De Niro, Charles Dickens, J. Frank Dobie, Arthur Conan Doyle, David Douglas Duncan, Robert Frost, Erle Stanley Gardner, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, Sinclair Lewis, Carson McCullers, Sir Compton Mackenzie, Steve Martin, Edgar Lee Masters, Christopher Morley, Anne Sexton, George Bernard Shaw, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gertrude Stein, Tom Stoppard, Ray Walston, and Evelyn Waugh.
Access
Personal effects may be viewed in the Center's Reading and Viewing Rooms during regular hours. A minimum of 24 hours notice is required to pull items to the Reading Room. To make an appointment, please contact the collection assistant for costumes and personal effects.
The Harry Ransom Center's blog Cultural Compass gives an insider's look at news, events, exhibitions, acquisitions, multimedia content, researcher and scholarly work, conservation, and items from the collections.
