Rescue Suzette Haden Elgin Papers

Elgin_S_LRobin Wayne Bailey is making an appeal on Facebook to save a vast archive of material that belonged to the late Suzette Haden Elgin.

An antique dealer in Arkansas who purchases abandoned storage lockers for his business recently acquired one that contained all the papers, books and original artwork of Suzette Haden Elgin.

Suzette was much loved throughout Midwest and southern fandom and seen at many conventions during the eighties and nineties. A linguist, she retired from the University of San Diego and resettled in the Ozarks. She founded the Science Fiction Poetry Society and the Ozarks Center for Science Fiction. For a list of her many books, check Wikipedia (I’m writing this on an iPhone). The antique dealer contacted LOCUS, who then contacted me. I verified with Suzette’s husband that he had no room for what reportedly are “hundreds” of boxes. If any fan group is interested in rescuing any of this material, I’ll pass along the antique dealer’s contact info. I hope someone can save it. Please share this across all fannish channels.

You can reach Bailey with a Facebook message.

16 thoughts on “Rescue Suzette Haden Elgin Papers

  1. Thanks for posting this! U. Oregon currently has a collection of Elgin’s papers (along with Le Guin, Joanna Russ, and several other feminist SF writers), so I’ve sent email to them suggesting they take this opportunity to expand that collection.

  2. I was going to to recommend a college or university library, but I see someone is already on it. Thank goodness the antique dealer had some idea what he was looking at.

  3. Instinctual reaction: oh HELL no that must not go up for auction or get discarded!

    Please, if there’s any way that individuals can assist with this, update the thread. I never met her in person, but I loved her books and we were LJ acquaintances. (At one point she said I had filled in a lexical gap for her. I grinned for days.)

    She was a wonderful, insightful, kind, funny, charitable person. The world is poorer for her absence. And I have tears in my eyes thinking about that.

  4. Thanks for getting this out so quickly, Mike. I was more than a little shocked when LOCUS contacted me. I hope this material can be acquired and preserved. It’s my suspicion (without proof) that there may be some unpublished manuscripts in that material. Suzette complained to me on many occasions, particularly during my SFWA presidency, about publishers who wanted to acquire her new books, but only on the condition she use a pseudonym. She refused to do that. I’d love to know what’s become of those works.

  5. I really liked the Ozark trilogy. I hope her papers can be preserved and any potential manuscripts.

  6. @Robin Wayne Bailey: This is just……!!!!!

    I’ve posted on my facebook with alerts to archivists I know who work with sff, and will also be emailing two I know in sff archives (all at university libraries–fandom is incredible but these papers need to be at an archive–although it would be nifty it we could arrange for donations to support it since all archives are understaffed, underfunded, and overworked, and some now have new deanassholes who think all paper collections should be dumped and only electronic stuff).

    PLease let me know if there is anything I can do to help: Elgin is one of my favorite feminist writers, and this treasure must not be lost.

  7. Man, this would have been an episode of STORAGE WARS TV show I would have liked, but no doubt one of the idiots (I know- there are so many) would have purchased the unit and complained about having to recycle all those damned stacks of paper.

  8. Hey, Mike and Robin, it’s wonderful to see people involved in Our Thing springing into action in cases such as this. But…about the possibility of completed manuscripts in the boxes in storage? Anyone here know any SF editors? If that collection needs some monetary support and even money to get it shipped to a library or to pay some storage fees, is it considered good form or not in these cases for unpublished works to be withdrawn from the collection and published? I’m sure getting a few royalty checks wouldn’t hurt Mr. Elgin either. Can someone work that side of the street??

  9. @Sanford: I am not a copyrights lawyer, etc. etc. But I would think that Elgin’s husband who I imagine is in charge of the estate and for managing her copyright (although I’m having a vague memory that he may have health problems as well) would have to be the one making any decisions: that would be very much an issue for the Estate. I’m not at all sure publication royalties (which would take time in any case) could be used in this way. But I’m more than willing to work with Robin to set up some sort of fund-raising effort and publicize widely. I’ve heard back from one friend already whose university archivist is interested in the collection, so crossed fingers!

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  11. I have just found this page while searching for information about Suzette. My family and I fell in love with her fiction when my boys were young. We lived in Germany for 16+ years. My children went all the way through the German school system and to be sure they functioned as well in English as they did in German I would comb the bookstores whenever I was in the States and ship boxes back. I met her at a class in Tulsa in 1998. I wrote my Master of Library Science thesis on her Gentle Art and she was so helpful to me. When I saw that the storage shed had been accessed my heart just stopped. How did it all turn out??? I know this is way too late but I would be willing to assist financially to be sure things are preserved. And if transportation was an issue, we have a big truck and would be glad to deliver materials in bulk to any archive. Please let me know how to stay in touch with her works. I am so sorry to hear Mr. Elgin was also not well. He is such a nice man. I look forward to hearing from you.

  12. I have just found this page while searching for information about Suzette. My family and I fell in love with her fiction when my boys were young. We lived in Germany for 16+ years. My children went all the way through the German school system and to be sure they functioned as well in English as they did in German I would comb the bookstores whenever I was in the States and ship boxes back. I met her at a class in Tulsa in 1998. I wrote my Master of Library Science on her Gentle Art and she was so helpful to me. When I saw that the storage shed had been accessed my heart just stopped. How did it all turn out??? I know this is way too late but I would be willing to assist financially to be sure things are preserved. And if transportation was an issue, we have a big truck and would be glad to deliver materials in bulk to any archive. Please let me know how to stay in touch with her works. I am so sorry to hear Mr. Elgin was also not well. He is such a nice man. I look forward to hearing from you.

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