Archive of original typed and handwritten manuscripts and galleys for novels by Gerald A. Brown, 1960s-1990s

N.p.: N.p., 1990. Archive of original material belonging to mystery and crime author Gerald A. Browne, consisting of 19 typed manuscripts, 13 handwritten manuscripts, 8 corrected galleys, 3 screenplays, and extensive handwritten, typed, and xerographically duplicated materials pertaining to all novels in the author's oeuvre.

Browne was born and raised in Litchfield County, Connecticut. He attended the University of Mexico, the Sorbonne, and Columbia University. "It's All Zoo," his debut novel, was written while Browne was living in Paris and working as a fashion photographer. The novel's success heralded a twenty-year career as a bestselling author, until his retirement in the late 1990s.

His works were adapted twice for film: "11 Harrowhouse" (1974), directed by Aram Avakian and starring Charles Grodin, James Mason, and Candice Bergen, and "Green Ice" (1981), directed by Ernest Day and starring Ryan O'Neal, Anne Archer, and Omar Sharif. Both films follow jewel heists, a common theme in many of Browne's novels.

Included in the archive are several handwritten, heavily revised drafts of each novel, usually divided into a number of notebooks or notepads, accompanied in several circumstances by the author's handwritten notebooks containing character breakdowns, plot and chapter outlines, and content references. The notebooks provide a glimpse into Browne's unusually intensive research process during the drafting and writing of his novels, spanning security systems to gemology to detailed location descriptions, a practice which infused his writing with realism and vivid attention to detail.

In addition to the handwritten drafts, the archive contains several typescript manuscripts for each novel, usually unbound, with extensive manuscript revisions, both substantive and editorial in content. Several of the drafts provide completely different endings than the published novels, or show multiple versions of the same page and chapter, showing the importance of repetition and rewriting to Browne's work, with manuscript, copied, and typed annotations by both Browne and his editors throughout.

Also included are publisher's galleys for several of the novels, including "It's All Zoo" (1968), "11 Harrowhouse Street" (1972), "Hazard" (1973), "The Arousers" (1974), and "Slide" (1976), some with multiple galley drafts, and almost all with handwritten manuscript revisions. The galley for "The Arousers" is credited to Browne's wife, Merle Lynn, who was also originally credited as co-author of Browne's second novel, "The Ravishers" (1970).

The archive also contains material for screenplay adaptations of Browne's work, including three screenplays for "11 Harrowhouse Street" and approximately 35 unbound leaves resembling an early screenplay draft for "Hot Siberian." While the former did eventually serve as the basis for a 1974 film, Browne is not credited as a screenwriter in the film's final edit. The existing screenplay material lends valuable (and until now, relatively unseen) insight into the author's own perception of the way his novels would best be translated into film.

Archive material generally Very Good plus to Very Good.