Scope and arrangement
The Michael Anthony Papers document the personal and professional life of Michael Anthony from his departure from England in 1968 to 1984 when Anthony was 52 years old. Since his literary career is currently still active, these papers are necessarily incomplete. The collection has been divided into two series, Personal Papers and Professional Papers.
The Michael Anthony papers are arranged in two series:
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The PERSONAL PAPERS consist of Correspondenceto and from Anthony, his and his wife's families in Trinidad, London, the United States (mostly New York City) and, in 1978-1979, his daughter, Jennifer at The Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin, Ireland. There is also correspondence between Anthony and friends such as the critic Kenneth Ramchand and Barbadian Athelson Clarke. The correspondence between family and friends from 1968-1971 especially, discusses the social, racial and political climates in England, the Caribbean and Brazil. Included in this series is a holograph notebook, (Diary)Anthony kept as he journeyed ahead of his family, aboard a commercial passenger ship from England to Brazil. The Financial Recordsinclude miscellaneous salary receipts from the National Cultural Council (NCC) of Trinidad, documents regarding the purchase of a house, and some insurance papers.
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PROFESSIONAL PAPERS. This series consists of General Correspondenceto and from Anthony during his employment (1972-1984) with the National Cultural Council of Trinidad (NCC). Correspondents during this period include Eric Williams, Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago, to whom Anthony wrote seeking employment, J.D. Elder, Chairman of the National Cultural Council until 1974, and Carlton Gomes, Minister of Education. Beginning in 1974, the NCC became a division of the Ministry of Education. Much of the correspondence in 1978 regards Anthony's unsuccessful attempts to secure an academic teaching position in the United States.
A major subseries of the correspondence is Anthony's Correspondence with Publishersregarding his writings. By turns intimate, combative and business-like, these letters both originals from publishers and carbon typescripts of Anthony's letters document Anthony's career as a writer and the evolution of the book publishing industry from 1967-1984. As the main publisher of the majority of Anthony's work, the correspondence with Andre Deutsch, Ltd., is particularly important. This includes letters between Anthony, Andre Deutsch, Diana Athill, Anthony's editor, and the Deutsch Ltd. financial department. Much of this correspondence concerns several misunderstandings about subsequent paperback publications of Anthony's work and royalty statements.
Folders containing the literary and historical texts, arranged by title in the Writingssubseries, usually contain several working drafts of each title. Typically, it appears that Anthony would first write his stories and novels in notebooks in longhand, then type a working draft, make corrections by hand, retype and recorrect subsequent drafts. The arrangement on receipt was disorganized and there does not always appear to be consistent pagination, both within a single draft and between drafts. In arranging these manuscripts an attempt was made to gather all pages of a manuscript draft and group all drafts under the relevant title heading, however, various unidentified pages of drafts may be among the Fragments, miscellaneousfolder for both Fiction and Nonfiction.