Legendary writer Gabriel García Márquez’s archive available online for free

There are precious few writers who can claim to have influenced the course of literary history and literary criticism in the manner of legendary author Gabriel García Márquez. For aspiring and established writers and litterateurs alike, Márquez stands out as an idol for his role in helping to launch what became known as the “boom in Latin American literature”.

It is a rare gift indeed then, to learn that the entire archive of this most influential of authors has been made available for everyone to read online entirely for free. Especially when that author’s works were still under copyright.

But this is precisely what the University of Texas has done, after acquiring the  Colombian-born writer’s archives in 2015, a year after his death.

The archive includes manuscript drafts of published and unpublished works, research material, photographs, scrapbooks, correspondence, clippings, notebooks, screenplays, printed material, ephemera, and an audio recording of García Márquez’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. It was bought by the University of Texas for US$2.2 million.

The searchable, online archive features almost 30,000 items, so it’s easy to get lost in there.

“Often estates take a restrictive view of their intellectual property, believing scholarly use threatens or diminishes commercial interests,” Steve Enniss, the director of the Harry Ransom Center, which digitized the archive, said. “We are grateful to Gabo’s family for unlocking his archive and recognizing this work as another form of service to his readers everywhere.”

Many researchers and academics have been poring over the archive since it first became available in 2017, and have credited the University of Texas for making such a valuable resource available for free. Many expect that access to García Márquez’s archive, including his personal notes and marginalia, will help advance literary research and criticism.

But this is not just a resource to be enjoyed, used and appreciated by academics. One of the most incredible things about García Márquez’s writing is how accessible it is – as The Guardian noted in its obituary of Garcia Marquez, his most famous novel, 100 years of solitude “not only proved immediately accessible to readers everywhere, but has influenced writers of many nationalities, from Isabel Allende to Salman Rushdie”.

So, what are you waiting for? Get on over to the Harry Ransom Center and start exploring (and getting lost in) this incredible literary resource.