We are extremely proud to be the repository for the papers of novelist, screenwriter, and memoirist James Ellroy, the “demon dog” of American literature. The bulk of Ellroy’s papers came to us as a gift in the late 1990s, and he has been generously adding to the archive since. I’m happy to report a new arrival of two boxes of material which documents some of Ellroy’s writing projects and activities over the past year or so.
Box 1, as received!
Box 2, in its raw state
The day these boxes arrived, I had a research methods class scheduled to come into Rare Books and Special Collections later that afternoon. After peeking into the first box, I decided to save the second one until the afternoon so we could open it in class together and discover what it contained. We were able to talk briefly about how materials like this could be used for research, the steps librarians and archivists take to describe materials like this, and of course the thrill of encountering the unknown. Here’s some of what we found in that box:
The screenplay to “Rampart,” with extensive revisions in Ellroy’s hand
The opening page of the manuscript to an episode of “James Ellroy’s L.A.:City of Demons”, a six-part Discovery Channel series from last year.
The Ellroy Papers finding aid is available here, and we welcome researchers and questions about the collection.
-jm