William Goyen Art Collection

William Goyen, 1915-1983
Art Collection, 1929-1954, most n.d.

1 box, 3 framed works, 2 ceramics (18 items)

Acquisition: Purchases (R6315, R10755) 1974, 1985, and Gift, 1974
Access: A minimum of twenty-four hours is required to pull art materials to the Reading Room.
Processed by: Helen Young, 2003

Biographical Sketch
Scope and Contents
Item List

Biographical Sketch

Charles William Goyen was born on 24 April 1915 in Trinity, Texas, to Charles Provine Goyen and Mary Inez (Trow) Goyen. When he was eight, the family moved to Houston, where Goyen attended public schools. He graduated from Sam Houston High School and received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in Comparative Literature from Rice University in 1927 and 1939.

Goyen taught at the University of Houston for one year. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II aboard an aircraft carrier, where he began work on his first and most celebrated novel, The House of Breath. After the war he returned briefly to Texas before leaving to pursue a writing career. From 1945 to 1952 he lived for periods in New Mexico, California, and New York City. In Taos, New Mexico, he built a tiny adobe house on land provided by Frieda Lawrence; here he was close friends with Lawrence, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Dorothy Brett.

After the success of The House of Breath (1950), and his first collection of stories, Ghost and Flesh: Stories and Tales (1952), he was awarded Guggenheim fellowships in 1952 and 1954, which allowed him to spend time in Rome in 1954-55. After he returned from Europe, Goyen stayed in New York City for several years. He started writing plays and stage adaptations of his own fiction; six of his plays were produced, and he won a Ford Foundation Grant for Theater Writing. His theater work also brought him into contact with Doris Roberts, a stage, motion-picture, and television actress, and they married November 1963. From 1966 to 1971 Goyen worked as an editor at McGraw-Hill. Over the years Gohen taught as a visiting lecturer at various universities, including Brown, Columbia, Princeton, and the University of Southern California. The Goyens moved to Los Angeles in 1975, and he died there of lymphoma August 29, 1983.

Sources:

Gibbons, Reginald. "William Goyen." Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 218, American Short-Story Writers Since World War II, 2d ser., ed. Patrick Meanor. Detroit: Gale Research, 1999.

Goyen, William. Three Woman: a Memoir. Austin, Tex.: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, 1999.

"Goyen, Charles William." The Handbook of Texas Online. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/GG/fgo32.html [Accessed Thu Oct 31 12:47:56 US/Central 2002].

Scope and Contents

The William Goyen Art Collection comprises eighteen works from Goyen's archive. These include works by his Taos associates -- two works by Frieda Lawrence, a collage by Dorothy Brett, and two ceramic works by Frieda Lawrence's second husband, Angelo Ravagli. There are two portrait drawings of Goyen -- one attributed to Don Bachardy and one by Joseph Glasco. The works are listed alphabetically by artist. Titles are transcribed from the items. Cataloger's titles appear in brackets.

The Ransom Center also has materials from Goyen's archives in its Manuscripts Collection, Library, and Photography Collection.