Personal archives are those created by individuals for their own individual needs and purposes. As a category of archive, personal archives are under-studied and under-represented in the archival literature. This dissertation seeks to fill some of the gaps identified by archival theorists by investigating the nature of personal archives and the application of foundational principles of archival theory to them. Focusing on the archives of a particular sub-set of creators, literary authors, I question both recent and persistent trends toward a psychological or character-based approach to personal archives, and call attention to the limitations of past and current interpretations of the principle of provenance (and its sub-principles, the principle of respect for original order and the principle of respect des fonds) as it is understood in relation and applied to writers’ archives. I argue that archival theory is too strongly oriented toward the creator of archives as referent rather than to the archive itself as referent, and propose the need for a stronger focus, both in theory and in practice, on the various individuals and processes that shape an archive. Finally, I call for more candid descriptive practices that better convey to researchers the complicated life histories of the archives they consult and that admit the degree to which archives are the self-conscious constructs of a variety of archival agents.

Personal archives are those created by individuals for their own individual needs and purposes. As a category of archive, personal archives are under-studied and under-represented in the archival literature. This dissertation seeks to fill some of the gaps identified by archival theorists by investigating the nature of personal archives and the application of foundational principles of archival theory to them. Focusing on the archives of a particular sub-set of creators, literary authors, I question both recent and persistent trends toward a psychological or character-based approach to personal archives, and call attention to the limitations of past and current interpretations of the principle of provenance (and its sub-principles, the principle of respect for original order and the principle of respect des fonds) as it is understood in relation and applied to writers’ archives. I argue that archival theory is too strongly oriented toward the creator of archives as referent rather than to the archive itself as referent, and propose the need for a stronger focus, both in theory and in practice, on the various individuals and processes that shape an archive. Finally, I call for more candid descriptive practices that better convey to researchers the complicated life histories of the archives they consult and that admit the degree to which archives are the self-conscious constructs of a variety of archival agents.