‘Literary manuscripts are precious to cultural heritage and to scholarship, and many have wider popular appeal. They inform literary and biographical studies, textual studies, cognitive studies, and many areas of research. Above all, they are precious because of the information they provide about the creative process and what influences this…’

From ‘Authors and their papers: a guidance sheet for authors and writers’, Group for Literary Archives and Manuscripts (GLAM) et al., 2015.

Aimed at both authors thinking about their literary papers and authors using literary archives, SoA Contracts Advisors, Sarah Baxter and Tilly Zeeman offer tips about finding, approaching and donating to archives, as well as basic, practical advice about the preservation and depositing of physical and digital materials. Sarah and Tilly also discuss how copyright, privacy and confidentiality can have an impact on writers using biographical and historical materials from archives in their own work.