Introduction

The José Donoso Papers contain 45 notebooks which provide access to the author’s drafts, writing plans, literary critiques, reflections, reading lists, and a wide array of other noteworthy materials. They range in date from 1924 to 1966 and are primarily in Spanish, with occasional comments, ideas, quotes, and reflections in English. They are relatively small pads, mostly spiral-bound, generally about 6 x 8 inches but varying somewhat in size and more widely in thickness. In a few cases, the spiral bindings have been removed.

The different sections in the descriptions of each Notebook have been created to facilitate identification of both their general and specific content. Judgements, inevitably, are both selective and subjective. Nonetheless, each entry provides a description of the content; a list of named characters; works in progress as described by Jose Donoso; and references he makes to writers, artists, and other personalities, as well as to literary and artistic works. The miscellaneous category provides access to more varied materials, among them: lists of books Jose Donoso had read or planned to read, sketches and small drawings, phone numbers, lists of people's names, and draft letters.

Numbers at the end of descriptive phrase always refer to a notebook page with that number.

More specifically:

Physical description:Information on the number of leaves and/or pages and other facts about the physical items. These notes indicate any conflicts between the dates JD sets forth in the index card and the dates in the notebooks themselves. Where the notebook leaves or pages were unnumbered, the date JD specified is given here as a reference. Other information related to page numbers and how to read the notebook is also noted here.

The Index Cards: At the time JD transferred his early papers, including these notebooks, to The University of Iowa Libraries, he made notes on index cards associated with each of them. These notes have been transcribed and included (in italics) in this index. Question marks signal letters or words difficult to interpret.

Content: A brief general characterization of the primary content of the notebook.

Work in Progress: Each work-in-progress in this notebook, under a title assigned by JD, is noted. A list of characters named in the work is appended, in parenthesis, to the titles. For example, in Notebook A the story “The Poisoned Pastries" includes characters referred to as "sister, father, mother." The list of characters has reference only to this piece: the names of many characters change in the course of the creative process recorded in the notebooks. These changes, however, are not explored systematically in this index.

Work Plans: Jose's notes for plot, character, scene and other possible developments of a work in progress.

Secondary Projects:Pieces not titled and mentioned in passing (or, occasionally, worked up in detail) are briefly described here.

Miscellaneous:Drawings (e.g. portraits of characters or other people), notes on phone numbers, addresses, lists, poems, and isolated comments (related or not to JD's published or in-progress works) are indexed in this section.

Referencesthe "References" section is closed with “et al,” one or more references were omitted from the list because of insufficient information. Uncertainty about the date(s) of a reference is indicated with bracketed question marks.