Conroy Donates Manuscripts to Univ. of South Carolina

A vast collection of author Pat Conroy's handwritten manuscripts, personal papers and family memorabilia is going to the University of South Carolina and will be made available to scholars around the world.

Conroy is appearing Friday at the university's Hollings Library with USC President Harris Pastides to make the announcement.

Because the 68-year-old author does not use a typewriter or computer, the collection includes 10,000 handwritten pages of all his varied drafts, from early work “The Water is Wide,” through “The Prince of Tides,” “The Lords of Discipline,” and “My Reading Life.”

Conroy's works consistently top best seller lists. Several have been made into movies, including “The Prince of Tides,” which Barbra Streisand starred in and directed.

Included are 80 scrapbooks of letters, photos and news clippings put together by Conroy's late father, Don, the abusive Marine Corps pilot who inspired Conroy's novel “The Great Santini.” Baby books, childhood compositions, movie scripts, love letters, divorce papers and even financial records are included.

Dean of University Libraries Tom McNally said it is fitting the collection remains in the state that inspired so many of Conroy's works. “Pat writes about South Carolina, he lives in South Carolina, South Carolina and the Lowcountry are his heart and soul,” McNally said.

McNally, who negotiated the acquisition for the library with a bookseller friend of Conroy's, said the archive was acquired for the university through a donation made by USC alum Richard Smith of Columbia and his wife Novelle in memory of Richard's mother Dorothy. McNally declined to describe the cost of the purchase. It will include everything Conroy writes in the future, the dean added.

Conroy never learned to type, McNally said, because his father forbade it, deriding it as “women's work.”

“The Great Santini was old school, really old school!” McNally said with a chuckle. But that may turn into a special blessing for scholars, the dean said.

“With modern computers now, the best we get are a few drafts, and unless some old drafts are saved along the way, for most authors, they are gone,” McNally said. With this collection, academics and scholars will be able to trace the transition of the writer's thoughts and work, accompanied by the letters and journals Conroy kept over the decades.

An archivist has been hired to organize the collection and it will be ready for scholars to access in about a year, McNally said.