The World of Larry Collins

Gandhi with Lord and Lady Mountbatten, 1947

Larry Collins' decision to choose Lauinger Library as the repository for his archives brings the papers of a well-known and respected writer and novelist to increase the library's research potential in American literature and other fields as well. A meticulous researcher himself, Collins writes about controversial historical issues, and in the course of a 25-year collaboration with French author Dominique Lapierre, he examined a variety of the important events of our century. The French and American bestseller Is Paris Burning? (1965) recounts day-by-day incidents prior to the liberation of the city in 1944; O Jerusalem! (1972) presents an unbiased account of the battle for that city in 1948; Freedom at Midnight (1975) chronicles the violent separation of India and Pakistan. In their first novel together, The Fifth Horseman (1980), Collins and Lapierre describe a fictional terrorist attack on New York with nuclear weapons--today as then a disquieting subject. Collins has gone on to publish such novels as Fall from Grace (1985), Maze (1989), and Black Eagles (1993).

In addition to manuscripts and typescripts, comprehensive research files, photographs, and correspondence, the collection includes scores of interviews with participants in historic events, transcripts of interviews with the late Lord Mountbatten being among the most extensive. The collection is currently being processed and will be available to researchers in the near future.