One of the most recent additions to Princeton University Library’s (PUL) extensive holdings of Latin American literary archives is a collection containing hundreds of letters from the mid 1950s to the early 1970s between Salvador Novo and his longtime friend and patron Carlos I. Guajardo.
Also part of the collection are manuscripts and typescripts of poems, theater scripts, translations, and lectures, as well as offprints, invitations, photographs, and other miscellaneous materials. All of them can be consulted by researchers in Firestone Library’s Special Collections.
Salvador Novo López (1904-1974) was a prolific Mexican poet, essayist, playwright, novelist, translator, and chronicler. Together with his friend Xavier Villaurrutia, he was a co-founder of the landmark avant-garde literary magazines of the late 1920s and 1930s, Ulises and Contemporáneos.
Some of the most highly regarded works among Novo’s vast literary production include Nueva grandeza mexicana, Nuevo amor, La estatua de sal, En defensa de lo usado, Return ticket, Los diálogos, and the series of chronicles titled La vida en México en el periodo presidencial de… which covered from the six-year presidential term of Lázaro Cardenas to the first half of Luis Echevarría’s.
Novo was named Mexico City’s official chronicler in 1965 and received the Premio Nacional de Literatura in 1967. His autobiography, La estatua de sal, is also available in English translation.
The bulk of Salvador Novo’s personal and archive is located at the Centro de Estudios de Historia de México Carso in Mexico City. A complete description of Princeton’s holdings can be found in the finding aid Archivo de Salvador Novo, 1955-1996.
