Andrea Levy archives
Item
Title of collection or material
Andrea Levy archives
Significant contributors
Source institution
General notes
Central to the archive is a rich series of working drafts for her five published novels, including Small Island (2004), which won the Orange Prize, the Whitbread Novel Award, Whitbread Book of the Year, the Orange Best of the Best and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, as well as Levy’s 2010 follow-up The Long Song which was short-listed for the Booker Prize and won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.
The working notes held within the archive demonstrate not only her mastery of characterisation and plot, but also the grand ambition of her fictional project: she viewed her novels as fitting together into a single lineage and the archive contains a clue making an explicit connection between characters in The Long Song and Small Island that many readers may have missed.
Levy’s extensive research into the history of Jamaica and her own family background is integral to the archive, which includes audio recordings of interviews with her mother Amy Levy, used in the writing of Small Island.
The working notes held within the archive demonstrate not only her mastery of characterisation and plot, but also the grand ambition of her fictional project: she viewed her novels as fitting together into a single lineage and the archive contains a clue making an explicit connection between characters in The Long Song and Small Island that many readers may have missed.
Levy’s extensive research into the history of Jamaica and her own family background is integral to the archive, which includes audio recordings of interviews with her mother Amy Levy, used in the writing of Small Island.
Extent
currently being processed
Language
Call number
currently being processed