British libraries seeking original literary archives-the ore from which most original scholarship is mined-have to contend with heavy competition from America and precious little in the way of funds with which to pay authors for their notes and scribblings.rnOver the years, the archives of Sir Salman Rushdie, Sir VS. Naipaul and his first wife, Patricia, and Sir Tom Stoppard, among others, have all been sold to wealthy American universities. At the end of last year, the British Library bid ￡11m ($2.2m) for the papers of Harold Pinter, the playwright and Nobel laureate. Earlier this month, it put down another ￡500,000 for the poet Ted Hughes's estate; his 6,000-volume library had earlier been sold for a considerable sum to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. But all these purchases have been possible only thanks to the generosity of private donors.rnSo just imagine the smiles that have broken out at Oxford University. On October 27th it will announce that the playwright Alan Bennett, chronicler of kings and queens and history boys, is leaving his entire literary estate to the Bodleian Library-free of charge.
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