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Monday, January 8, 2024

Bancroft Library acquires RAW manuscripts


The Bancroft Library. (Creative Commons photo by Søren Fuglede Jørgensen. Source)

 The Bancroft Library, the special collections library at the University of California at Berkeley, has acquired the Michael and Cynthia Horowitz psychedelic archives, a collection that includes the manuscripts of Robert Anton Wilson's Schroedinger's Cat trilogy and the first Cosmic Trigger book, along with materials from Timothy Leary and other authors who wrote about psychedelics. Michael Horowitz was Leary's archivist and his collection of Leary's papers are owned by New York City's public library.

The Horowitz  psychedelic archives at the Bancroft Library are listed in the library catalog, but they are still being processed and are not yet available to the public.

There also is a new UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, which has joint programs with Harvard.

8 comments:

Eric Wagner said...

Thank you for sharing this.

chad said...

Does anyone know whether the Schroedinger's Cat manuscript would differ from either the combined, published edition, or the three individually published books?

Rasa said...

Hey Chad, that's a great question, and worth looking into!

chad said...

I'll be on it!

quackenbush said...

When the single SCT book was published, "they" cut out a couple hundred pages that were in the 3 separate books, so there's that.

Eric Wagner said...

I think Bob did the cutting for the one volume edition, and he made some revisions as well.

chad said...

A search of RAW on their site revealed one curious entry: "the Robert A. Wilson Collection of H.L. Mencken". Hard to glean much more from its description.

But I did find another site that provided more detail, and it looks like the Wilson portion is just an intro essay: https://www.bookmarxbooks.com/product/74061/The-Robert-A-Wilson-Collection-of-H-L-Mencken-Sheridan-Libraries-Publication

I know RAW was a Mencken fan so I wonder if this is indeed an essay by our guy? I would love to see an essay on Mencken by Wilson.

chad said...

Ah shit, I just read the foreword and Robert A. Wilson is not Robert Anton Wilson.