Albright Donates Bradbury Collection to IUPUI

Author Ray Bradbury’s family and his longtime friend Donn Albright recently donated collections of Bradbury’s manuscripts and letters, along with furniture and other items to the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

“We plan to reconstruct Mr. Bradbury’s home office as it existed in the mid-1960s, at the height of his power as a creative writer and cultural visionary,” said Jonathan Eller, Chancellor’s Professor of English at IUPUI and director of the Bradbury center.

The writer left his manuscripts and author’s copies of his books to Donn Albright, his principal bibliographer and a Pratt Institute professor. In turn, “Donn, a native Hoosier, has graciously donated most of these books and papers to the Bradbury center,” Eller explained.

The Bradbury family made a complementary donation of the furnishings, correspondence, awards and mementoes from Bradbury’s home office. Many artifacts representing Bradbury’s strong influence on America’s space program are also included in the Bradbury family gift.

Albright’s gift, to be known as the Bradbury-Albright Collection, will be the centerpiece of the Bradbury Memorial Archive at the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies.

The IU School of Liberal Arts will catalog and store most of the items until the Bradbury center is able to expand its space to accommodate the new holdings. A few items will be on display in the center offices until then.

The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies is a research component within the Institute for American Thought in the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI. The center opened in 2007 with the goal of providing an archive for Bradbury’s writings and a library of related reference books in the fields of fantasy and science fiction.

Shipment of the Bradbury items to the IUPUI campus this month coincided with a shipment of Bradbury’s home library and related materials to the Waukegan Public Library in Illinois, a donation representing the author’s wish to leave his hometown with a significant portion of his literary legacy. Waukegan Library staff and the IUPUI center worked closely throughout the summer to coordinate the shipments from Bradbury’s Los Angeles home.

[From the press release. Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]