BY OLINE H. COGDILL

hammett dashiell
Two archives of Dashiell Hammett, left, will join James Ellroy’s manuscripts, the papers of George V. Higgins, and Elmore Leonard’s Hawaiian shirts along with collections relating to Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald at the University of South Carolina.

According to the Associated Press and other media, the two archives contain hundreds of personal letters, including some 400 Hammett wrote to his wife and daughters and roughly 70 written by Lillian Hellman, with whom Hammett lived at the time of his death in 1961, at age 66.

The acquisition also includes photographs, screenplays, more than 300 first editions and 42 copies of the pulp magazine Black Mask containing Hammett’s work, as well as a replica of the black Maltese Falcon statuette from the 1941 film starring Humphrey Bogart. One archive was acquired from Hammett’s family and the other from the biographer Richard Layman.

“This is the collection of Hammett material,” Tom McNally, the university’s dean of libraries, told The Associated Press, which first reported the acquisition. “There is no equal to it in terms of published materials.”

Some pieces will be on display at the university’s Hollings Library through July 31.

The Hammett archives bolster the university’s crime fiction collection.

The archives of Leonard, who died in 2013, include more than 450 manuscripts, correspondence, and research materials relating to his more than 40 books, numerous short stories, and screenplays. The collection also includes Leonard’s Hawaiian shirts and will eventually include his desk, his typewriters, some 1,300 books from his personal library, and even a pair of his sneakers.

Peter Leonard, the author’s son, explained in a release that his father chose the university because of its Hemingway and Higgins collection.

In the release, which was quoted in the New York Times, Peter Leonard said that during his father’s visit to the South Carolina campus in 2013 a librarian showed the Higgins collection, including the manuscript for The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which was published in 1970.

“That got my dad’s attention. That book set my dad free,” Peter Leonard was quoted.

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