Literary Archives
See below for guides to our chief archive and manuscript resources for literary research.
Edinburgh University Library has a rich and diverse collection of literary manuscripts, with particularly strong holdings of 20th-century Scottish writing. Our modern Scottish collections include literary manuscripts and correspondence by some of the leading figures of the Scottish Literary Renaissance, such as Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCaig, George Mackay Brown, Helen B. Cruickshank, and Sydney Goodsir Smith. Important earlier collections include the Laing Collection, which covers four centuries of Scottish literature, and the Corson Collection of Sir Walter Scott Materials.
Our literary collections extend beyond Scotland to cover some of the major figures in 20th-century British writing. Particularly significant collections includes the papers of critic and essayist John Middleton Murry, of poet and novelist John Wain, and of the wide-ranging Anglo-Welsh writer Robert Nye.