Eighteen letters from the novelist Wilson Harris to the academic Stuart Murray.

Murray had first read Harris when a PhD student in New Zealand, and contacted him when he returned to live in the UK in late 1992, as he had begun to teach Harris’s first novel ‘Palace of the Peacock’. Their correspondence began in March 1993 with a discussion of the use of historical contexts in ‘Palace of the Peacock’ and expanded to include Harris’s about-to-be published ‘Resurrection at Sorrow Hill’: Murray sent Harris a review he had written and Harris wrote back about the review and the novel. The letters then expanded (after Murray moved to work at Trinity College, Dublin) when in 1994 Harris agreed to submit – for a volume of essays Murray was editing – a work-in-progress piece from the novel he was then developing, which became ‘Jonestown’, published in 1996. The letters up to early 1996 discuss details of the different versions of the work-in-progress sent to Murray, and Harris’s responses to Murray’s questions. In September 1996 Harris wrote to Murray to discuss the reception of ‘Jonestown’ following its publication, and then in May 1997 he wrote again to let Murray know that he had received the book Murray had edited, ‘Not on Any Map: Essays on Postcolonialism and Cultural Nationalism’, published that year by Exeter University Press. There are five further letters written between April 1999 and September 2001, in which Harris let Murray know, among other things, of the adaptation and reception of a play version of 'Jonestown' (by Tone Brulin) staged in Antwerp.

The letters are both manuscript and typescript and are accompanied by related materials such copies of blurbs for Harris’s forthcoming publications, interviews with him, reviews of his work, and programmes. The collection also contains a typescript of the developing ‘Jonestown’ work-in-progress sent by Harris to Murray (at GBR/0012/MS Add.10610/5) and a copy of a corrected document following Murray’s edit, prior to the publication of ‘Not On Any Map’ (at GBR/0012/MS Add.10610/6). Most of the letters were sent to Murray when he was working at Trinity College, Dublin.

All except the last of the letters are accompanied by a word-processed note by Murray outlining the context and content of the letter. These notes are included in the sheet-count in the 'Extent' field.