Literary archives differ from most other types of archival papers in that their locations are more diverse and difficult to predict. Acquiring institutions for literary papers have historically had very little by way of collecting policies and consequently the collecting of literary papers has often been opportunistic and serendipitous. The essays collected in this book all derive or continue from the recent work of the Diasporic Literary Archives Network, which takes a comparative, transnational and internationalist approach to studying literary manuscripts, their uses and their significance. The focus on diaspora provides a philosophical framework which gives a highly original set of points of reference for the study of literary archives, including concepts such as the natural home, the appropriate location, exile, dissidence, fugitive existence, cultural hegemony, patrimony, heritage, and economic migration.
