The University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Humanities
Research Center
Harris, Wilson, 1921-
Wilson Harris Collection
1960-1997
11 document boxes, 1 oversize box (4.62 linear feet)
The Wilson Harris collection includes
handwritten manuscripts, typescripts, page proofs, and reviews for several of his
books, as well as correspondence.
English
TXRC07-A4
Biographical Sketch
(Theodore) Wilson Harris was born on March 24, 1921, in New Amsterdam, British Guiana
(now Guyana), the son of Theodore Wilson and Millicent Josephine Glasford Harris.
His mixed ancestry included Amerindian, African, and European. When his father died
in 1923, Harris and his mother moved to Georgetown, where his mother remarried. In
1929, his stepfather disappeared in the Guyana rain forests and was presumed
drowned. Harris, his mother, and his half-sister then moved in with his beloved
grandfather, who died in 1937. Harris attended Queen’s College, also in Georgetown,
from 1934 until 1938. He worked as a government surveyor from 1942 until 1958 and as
part of that work led surveying expeditions from the coastlands into the country’s
interior.
Harris married Cecily Carew in 1945; the marriage ended in divorce. Harris emigrated
to England in 1959, and he met and married Scottish writer Margaret Burns that same
year. Since then, he has been a full-time writer, with occasional employment
lecturing and teaching creative writing classes at various universities in the
United States and other countries. Harris and his wife lived in the Holland Park
area of London, England, until 1985, when they moved to the Essex countryside.
Harris’s personal experiences with the complex Guyanese landscape and multi-racial
culture influenced his writing. His novels, known for their abstract and
experimental nature, are full of metaphors and complex symbolism, with an
intermingling of time, reality, imagination, memory, and dreams; they have been
called “psychical expeditions.” Harris’s early works were collections of poetry:
Fetish (1951, under the pseudonym Kona Waruk),
The Well and the Land (1952), and Eternity to a Season (1954). The Sun: Fourteen Poems in a Cycle was published along with prose
sketches in the journal Kyk-over-al in 1955. In 1960,
Faber and Faber published Harris’s first novel, Palace of the
Peacock, which used the geography of Guyana as a metaphor for the
landscape of the mind. It was followed by three more novels (The Far Journey of Oudin, 1961; The Whole
Armour, 1962; and The Secret Ladder, 1963),
making up what Harris calls his "Guyana Quartet." Heartland, which includes characters from Palace of
the Peacock, was published in 1964. Harris is also known for his
Carnival trilogy, consisting of Carnival (1985),
The Infinite Rehearsal (1987), and The Four Banks of the River of Space (1990). Harris’s
concern with cross-cultural parallels is evidenced by Black
Marsden: A Tabula Rasa Comedy (1972), which is set in Edinburgh, and its
sequel, Companions of the Day and Night (1975), set
in Mexico. The Age of the Rainmakers (1971) and
The Sleepers of Roraima (1970) are
reinterpretations of Amerindian myths. Resurrection at Sorrow
Hill (1993) is set in a mental institution with patients representing
the world’s greatest cultures. In Jonestown (1996),
the 1978 Jonestown Massacre is interwoven with the fall of the Mayan culture. In
addition to his novels, short stories, and poetry, Harris has published essays on
colonialism and post-colonialism, as well as studies in literary criticism, such as
Tradition, the Writer and Society: Critical
Essays (1967) and The Womb of Space: The
Cross-Cultural Imagination (1983).
Harris won the Guyana National Prize for Literature in 1987 and 2002.
Sources:
British Council Contemporary Writers in the UK website,
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/ (accessed 16 April 2007).
Contemporary Authors Online, http://www.galegroup.com/
(accessed 23 March 2007)
Contemporary Literary Criticism,
http://www.galegroup.com/ (accessed 23 March 2007).
Durix, Jean-Pierre. “Wilson Harris,”
Dictionary of Literary
Biography, Volume 117: Twentieth Century Caribbean and Black African Writers,
First Series. Detroit: Gale Group, 1992.
Maes-Jelinek, Hena.
Dream, Psyche, Genesis: The Works of
Wilson Harris, http://www.ulg.ac.be/facphl/uer/d-german/L3/whlife.html
(accessed 4 April 2007).
Maes-Jelinek, Hena, editor.
Wilson Harris: The Uncompromising
Imagination. Sydney, N.S.W.: Dangaroo Press, 1991.
Index Terms
People
Harris, Margaret Rose.
Thorpe, Michael.
Subjects
Authors, Caribbean.
Caribbean fiction (English)
Experimental fiction.
Guyanese fiction.
Document Types
Notebooks.
Scope and Contents
The Wilson Harris collection includes handwritten manuscripts, typescripts, page
proofs, and reviews for several of his books, as well as correspondence, primarily
letters written by Harris to Michael Thorpe. The collection is organized in three
series: Series I. Works, 1968-1993, undated; Series II. Reviews, 1960-1990; and
Series III. Correspondence, 1978-1997.
The Works series is arranged alphabetically by title. Most works are represented by
handwritten drafts in notebooks, composite typescript and handwritten manuscripts,
final typescripts, and page proofs. Among the works present are
The Age of the Rainmakers (1971), The Angel at the Gate (1982), Ascent to
Omai (1970), Black Marsden (1972), Carnival (1985), Companions of
the Day and Night (1975), The Four Banks of the
River of Space (1990), The Infinite
Rehearsal (1987), Jonestown (1996), Resurrection at Sorrow Hill (1993), and The Sleepers of Roraima (1970). In addition, there is a
photocopy of the published essay Harris wrote for Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series in 1992. Many of the
manuscripts include Harris’s notes or annotations explaining his creative process,
or what he referred to as the “re-visionary process.” For example, page proofs for
Angel at the Gate and Carnival contain his annotations referring to other drafts of those
works. Harris included a photocopy of his article Literacy and the Imagination with Carnival materials since he felt it illumined a strand regarding inner
guide-lines, or intuitive clues.
Series II. Reviews consists of clippings of reviews of works by Harris, as well as a
1960 radio transcript of John Connell’s review of
Palace of
the Peacock.
Series III. Correspondence is comprised of Harris’s letters to poet and literary
critic Michael Thorpe; the letters date from 1978 to 1997.
Acquisition:
Purchases, 1970-1998 (R4815, R6832, R12422, R12443, R13879, R14351); Gifts, 1992,
2004 (G9585, G12410)
Access:
Open for research
Processed by:
Katherine Mosley, 2007
Other materials by Wilson Harris in the Ransom Center may be found in the Ronald
Christ, Joseph Jones, John Lehmann, and Robert E. McDowell archives. A portrait bust
of Harris by Suzie Jones Sarrett is located in the Center’s Art Collection.
Container List
Series I. Works, 1968-1993, undated
1
The Age of the Rainmakers
(1971)
1
1
Handwritten manuscript, in notebook, undated
1
2-3
Composite handwritten and typescript manuscript, 23 and 24
June 1969, 23 July 1969, 6 August 1969, 27 and 29 October 1969, and
undated
1
4
Final typescript, typesetting copy, undated
1
5
Page proofs, 1971
1
The Angel at the Gate
(1982)
1
6
Handwritten manuscript, in eight notebooks, undated
2
1-3
Handwritten manuscript, in eight notebooks
(continued)
2
4
Final typescript, with printer’s marks, undated
2
5
Page proofs, 1982
2
6
Hambone review, photocopy,
1986
2
Ascent to Omai (1970)
2
7
Handwritten manuscript titled “The Ruined Porknocker,” with
“Alternative routes the novel could have taken which were
abandoned,” undated. Includes some revised typescript pages.
3
1-2
Handwritten manuscript (continued)
3
3
Typescript with handwritten revisions, 17 May
1968
3
4-5
Typescript, undated, and carbon typescript, 29 October 1968,
both with corrections. Typescript also includes printer’s marks.
3
6
Corrected page proofs, 1969
3
Black Marsden (1972)
3
7
Handwritten first rough working draft, 4 April
1971
3
8
Handwritten draft pages, in notebook, undated
4
1-2
Handwritten and typescript manuscript, undated
4
3
Final typescript, with printer’s marks, undated
4
4
Corrected page proofs, 1972
4
5
Journal of Commonwealth
Literature review, tearsheet, August 1974
4
Carnival (1985)
4
6-7
Handwritten manuscript in three notebooks, 13 November 1983,
undated
5
1
“Miscellaneous abandoned typescript and holograph material,”
typescript and handwritten pages, undated
5
2
Typescript and handwritten manuscript “A,” 9 and 28 October
1982, undated. With typescript note from author on “re-visionary
cycles in the composition of Carnival,” April 1991.
5
3
Corrected bound page proofs, 1985
5
4
“Literacy and the Imagination: A Talk,” photocopy from The Literate Imagination, 1989
5
Companions of the Day and Night
(1975)
5
5-6
Handwritten manuscript in four notebooks, undated, 24 January
1974
5
7
Typescript with handwritten revisions and insert pages,
undated
5
8
Final typescript, typesetting copy, undated
6
1
Corrected page proofs, 1974
6
The Four Banks of the River of
Space (1990)
6
2-6
Handwritten manuscript in eleven notebooks,
undated
7
1-3*
Typescript and handwritten manuscript, undated. With note
from author regarding drafts, April 1991 (*oversize removed to box
12)
7
4
Corrected final typescript, 6 May 1989
7
5
Corrected page proofs, 1990
7
The Infinite Rehearsal
(1987)
7
6-7
Handwritten manuscript, undated
8
1
Typescript and handwritten manuscript, 3 July 1986
8
2
Corrected page proofs, 1987
8
Jonestown (1996)
8
3
Typescript and handwritten manuscript, 24 May 1994, undated
8
4-5
Typescript and handwritten manuscript, with miscellaneous
pages, July 1994, undated
8
6-7
Revised typescript, undated
9
1-2
Photocopy revised typescript with printer’s marks, undated.
With photocopy of typescript “Notes and Queries” regarding
manuscript and handwritten answers, undated
9
3
Corrected page proofs, 1996
9
Literacy and the Imagination: A
Talk--see folder 5.4
9
Resurrection at Sorrow Hill (1993)
9
4-7
“Early stages of composition,” handwritten drafts in ten
notebooks, undated, 15 June 1992
10
1-4
“Miscellaneous drafts,” handwritten and typescript pages,
November 1992, undated. With photocopy letter to Charles H. Rowell of
Callaloo, 19 October 1994, and
typescript of excerpt published in Third
Text.
10
5
Corrected final typescript, undated, November
1992
10
6
Corrected page proofs, 1993
11
The Sleepers of Roraima
(1970)
11
1
“Couvade,” typescript and miscellaneous handwritten pages,
undated
11
2
“I, Quiyumucon,” handwritten manuscript in notebook, undated
11
3
“I, Quiyumucon,” corrected typescript, undated
11
4
“Yurokon,” typescript and handwritten manuscript, undated
11
5
Final typescript, undated
11
6
Corrected page proofs, 1970
11
7
Wilson Harris, photocopy
essay in Contemporary Authors Autobiography
Series, Volume 16. With letter from Margaret Wilson to
Joseph and Joan [Johanna] Jones, 3 October 1992.
Series II. Reviews, 1960-1990
11
8
Review clippings, 1960-1990, and radio transcript of Palace of the Peacock review by John
Connell, 13 October 1960
Series III. Correspondence, 1978-1997
11
9-10
Letters to Michael Thorpe, 1978-1997
12
Oversize Materials
Index of Correspondents
- Callaloo (Charles H. Rowell)--10.4
- Edwards, Paul Geoffrey, 1926-1992--11.9
- Evans Brothers Ltd. (W. Knock)--11.10
- Harris, Margaret Rose-- 11.7, 11.10
- Jones, Joseph Jay, 1908- --11.7
- Jones, Johanna--11.7
- Thorpe, Michael--11.9, 11.10
- Thorpe, Elin--11.10