Elmore Leonard died in 2013, but now some of his signature Hawaiian shirts will be preserved forever at the University of South Carolina, which has acquired more than 150 boxes of Mr. Leonard’s archive.
The more conventional literary remains in the archive include more than 450 manuscripts, correspondence and research materials relating to his more than 40 books, numerous short stories and screenplays. Future Leonard scholars will also be able to examine his desk, his typewriters, some 1,300 books from his personal library and even a pair of his sneakers.
The university, which awarded its Thomas Cooper Medal to Leonard in 2013, also holds the papers of the crime writers George V. Higgins and James Ellroy, as well as extensive collections relating to Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. But the author’s son, Peter Leonard, said in a release that it was the Hemingway collection, along with the Higgins, that persuaded Leonard, who was born in New Orleans and lived much of his life near Detroit, to send his papers to South Carolina.
On his visit to the campus in 2013, a librarian showed him the Higgins collection, including the manuscript for “The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” his 1970 crime novel. “That got my dad’s attention,” the younger Mr. Leonard said. “That book set my dad free.”