At Harvard, the life and legacy of Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal was driven, brilliant, irascible, irreverent. He was a public intellectual, author, political candidate, autodidact, essayist, playwright, and provocateur. He was also generous to Harvard. Several years ago, Vidal left his papers and library to the University. Now the fruits of that gift, combined with an earlier gift of a portion of his papers in 2001, have been meticulously cataloged and archived at Houghton Library. The expanded collection captures the varied accomplishments of Vidal, who died in 2012, and traces the arc of his personal and professional life. Spanning his boyhood to his final years, the roughly 500 shelf feet of material includes correspondence, drafts of his books and plays, photographs, videotapes, fan mail, and material related to his famously fiery exchanges with conservative author and commentator William F. Buckley Jr. “He was involved in so many cultural issues of 20th-century America and contributed such an important voice, and his papers capture that,” said...