The original materials available digitally in the José Donoso Digital Archive, along with additional documentation not yet included, are physically stored at Princeton University and Universidad Diego Portales. For more details about their archival collections and how to access them, refer to the information below.

The Programa de Archivos at Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, is dedicated to revitalizing and facilitating public access to the archives of late Chilean writers, intellectuals, artists and politicians. Through investigation, digitalization, publications and exhibitions, together with globally accessible web platforms, we preserve the country's documentary information and promote a deep understanding of its cultural and political heritage.

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Collection overview

The collection includes typescript drafts of several of Donoso's major works such as Este domingo, El obsceno pájaro de la noche, Historia personal del "boom", Tres novelitas burguesas, Casa de campo, and La desesperanza; correspondence from family members, publishers, and literary friends; manuscripts of short stories, articles, speeches and lectures, plays and screenplays; and material about Donoso, such as interviews, essays, newspaper clippings, and a filmscript on his life. Also included are Donoso's notebooks. Furthermore, there is a small selection of miscellaneous material, including awards, photographs, contracts and correspondence of his wife, María Pilar Serrano.

Access

A finding aid listing the content of the José Donoso Papers is available online. Visit the Princeton University Library Finding Aids site to explore other archival collections at Princeton. For additional information about visiting the library and available services, visit the Special Collections homepage. Questions may be submitted at Ask Special Collections.

History of the collection

The story of how Donoso's papers came to Princeton reflects a long and complex relationship between the writer and the university. Donoso studied at Princeton between 1949 and 1951, a decisive period in his literary formation, during which he began to write his first stories. Years later, in 1972, he made a first delivery of manuscripts to Princeton University, partly as payment for a tuition debt he had accumulated as a student. This initial gesture marked the beginning of what has later become one of the most important archives of Latin American literature in the United States.

The José Donoso Papers are significant not only for the extensive number of invaluable unique documents they contain but also for being the first Latin American literary archive housed at Princeton. The archive inaugurated an long standing initiative that has made it possible to preserve and study the papers of dozens of other authors, including seminal figures of the Latin American "Boom," such as Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, and Mario Vargas Llosa. Princeton University has established itself as a reference center for the study of contemporary Latin American literature, and the Donoso archive is the cornerstone of this collection.

In 1993, Donoso returned to Princeton for a final visit, bringing with him a suitcase full of his personal journals. Over the years, the acquisition of Donoso’s papers had been arranged by Peter Johnson, Princeton’s Librarian for Latin American Studies, who planned with the author which batches would be delivered to the university. On this occasion, Donoso negotiated with Don Skemer, Princeton’s curator of manuscripts, to sell the notebooks, requesting that some pages of the notebooks remain sealed for 50 years. After intense negotiation, it was agreed that the notebooks would be sealed for 15 years. This archive includes not only the journals, but also correspondence with writers, critics, publishers, and friends.