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Percy Manuscripts and Related Materials

An Overview of the available manuscript collections


There are three main collections of materials pertaining to Walker Percy's work and life. These include his personal papers held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Knopf Collection at the University of Texas at Austin, and a biographical collection currently being archived at Loyola University in New Orleans.

For more information about accessibility, you may consult the following listed resources. For brief descriptions of the collections, see below.

With financial support, the Project hopes in the future to bring copies of the following:

  1. Walter West’s 1992 Walker Percy Symposium address, “Extending Walker Percy's Legacy: The Story of His Papers at UNC-CHּ
  2. Heather Moore’s 1993 essay “Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer: A Publishing History” (The Library Chronicle of the University of Texas, 22.4: 123-144); and
  3. A complete inventory of the Loyola Collection once it becomes available.

Collection Descriptions:

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Notes, outlines, source material, partial and complete drafts, setting copies and proofs of writings of novelist and essayist Walker Percy. Most of these papers are notes and draft material relating to Percy’s novels. The Moviegoer (1961), The Last Gentleman (1966), Love in the Ruins(1971), Lancelot (1977), and The Second Coming (1980); his two non-fiction works, The Message in the Bottle (1975), and Lost in the Cosmos (1983); and two unpublished works, a novel, “The Gramercy Winner,” and a non-fiction work, “Symbol and Existence: A Study in Meaning.” [About 255 items]. (from West et al, Inventory description); view the Percy Papers Inventory.

The University of Texas at Austin (Knopf’s publication of The Moviegoer)
Materials relating to The Moviegoer are found in five areas of the archive: General (1915-1961)/Historical (1962-1970) correspondence; Editor Files; Publicity Files; Knopf Personal Files; and Alfred A. Knopf Personal Correspondence Files,...[and include] 125 pages of letters and in-house memos relating to Percy’s novel...Percy’s contract and his author’s questionnaire...hundreds of newspaper clippings of reviews of the book and reports of the National Book Awards...promotion photographs, news releases, and a six-month advertising report...and two Reading Reports and a Planning Card (from Moore, Library Chronicle, 123).

Loyola University, New Orleans
Inventory currently not available.



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