The Eaton Collection - University of California,
Riverside
Description
The Eaton Collection is the largest
publicly-accessible collection of science fiction, fantasy,
horror and utopian fiction in the world. It consists of
hardback and paperback books, pulp magazines, fanzines, film
and visual material, comic books, and ephemera. It is housed in
the Special Collections Department of the UCR Libraries,
located on the fourth floor of the Tomás Rivera Library.
History of the Collection
The Eaton Collection originated with the
personal library of Dr. J. Lloyd Eaton, an Oakland, California
physician and book collector. Dr. Eaton's collection consisted
of about 7,500 hardback editions of science fiction, fantasy
and horror from the late nineteenth century to 1955. The
collection of Dr. Eaton, acquired in 1969, contained many rare
and unusual titles.
The development of the collection began
in 1980 under University Librarian Eleanor Montague.
Ms. Montague created the position of Eaton Curator, hiring
George Slusser for the position, a leading scholar who holds a
Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University. For
over twenty-five years Dr. Slusser, (now Curator Emeritus)
worked closely with the Collection Development Division and the
heads of Special Collections to add steadily to the collection,
bringing its holdings in hardback and paperback books to
almost 100,000. During these years, outstanding collections of
fanzines were acquired, including those of famed collectors
Terry Carr, Bruce Pelz, and Rick Sneary, bringing the fanzine
holdings to almost 300,000. Foreign works of science fiction
have been added systematically, including works in Chinese,
Czech, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese,
Romanian, Russian and Spanish.
The collection has also moved in
multi-media directions, acquiring film scripts, illustrated
narratives and comic books. It is the repository for manuscripts
by prominent science fiction writers like Richard Adams, Gregory
Benford, David Brin, Michael Cassutt, Robert L. Forward, Anne
McCaffery, Lewis Shiner, James White, and Colin Wilson.
From the outset, the intention of UCR
Libraries was to make the Eaton Collection an outstanding
resource for research and study. As part of its scholarly
mission, the Eaton Collection hosts a J. Lloyd Eaton Conference
launched in 1979. Over the years, the Eaton Conference has
attracted a number of famous writers, including Brian Aldiss,
Gregory Benford, Samuel R. Delany, Harlan Ellison, Robert
Silverberg, Theodore Sturgeon and Roger Zelazny. It has
attracted an equally distinguished group of critics and
scientists including Harold Bloom, Leslie Fiedler, Fredric
Jameson, Harry Levin, Marvin Minsky and Robert Scholes. Now in
its 26th year, the Conference has produced more than twenty
volumes of critical essays, published by various university
presses.
The Collection Today
Today the Eaton collection is the major
resource for research in science fiction, fantasy, horror and
utopian literature worldwide. It is visited by scholars from
around the world both for its American and international
holdings. Beginning with the 1517 edition of Thomas More's
Utopia, its range and wealth of material from early utopian
fiction to science fiction film ephemera and comic books offers
a formidable resource for anyone working in this area of modern
culture.
The Eaton Collection is also a compendium
of the history of the book and publishing for five centuries.
All covers are kept intact, with original dust jackets. The
wealth of visual materials covers an entire period in the
development of space and fantastic art; this repository of
images is constantly consulted by publishers and producers
including Disney Studios, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and
electronic publishers like Grolier.
In its vast richness of fanzine material,
the Eaton Collection offers an incomparable resource for
studying the rise of technocratic and scientific culture in the
US. These amateur magazines contain commentary and creative
fiction by many young authors who later became major writers
and leading figures in the scientific community.
Other noteworthy parts of the Collection
include: 500 shooting scripts of science fiction films; a 3,500
volume collection of proto- SF "Boy's Books" of the Tom Swift
variety; a collection of taped fan conventions from the Morris
Dollens' estate; a large collection of taped interviews with
American, British and French writers; reference materials on
topics such as applied science, magic, witchcraft, UFO's, and
Star Trek, and the largest holdings of critical materials on
science fiction and fantasy in the United States.
The Future of the Collection
To maintain its pre-eminence, the Eaton
Collection needs donations and gifts-in-kind to continue to
grow in significant areas such as its early utopian collection
and in new areas, such as Japanese science fiction, manga and
animé.
Preservation of its unique holdings is
also of the highest priority, and donations are necessary to
underwrite the salvaging of brittle materials. Another goal is
to produce an archival database of SF/Fantasy covers and art.
This is among the artwork that shaped the world we live in; the
production of such a web-accessible archive will be of great
value to future researchers.
Beyond acquisition and preservation, the
Eaton Collection sets as its final goal the dissemination of
materials to scholars and the general public. To this end, UCR
has created an Eaton Endowment Fund. Its purpose is to raise
funds for new facilities, to create an endowed Eaton Chair, to
establish a research and fellowship program to bring researchers
to the collection, and to underwrite colloquia and guest
speakers.
If you would like to make a donation to
the Eaton Endowment Fund, or if you have queries about the
Collection itself, please contact:
Melissa Conway, Ph.D.
Head
Special Collections Library
University of California, Riverside
P.O. Box 5900
Riverside, CA 92517
ph: 951-827-3233
fax: 951-827-4673
