Using the Collection
Items in this collection are available for research and located in our off-site storage facility (Southern Regional Library Facility). Request the items using the "Special Collections Request" links in the UC Library Search catalog record. View our video tutorial or contact LSC for more help with requesting items. The Ray Bradbury Papers (1950-1960) finding aid with full collection details can be viewed in the Online Archive of California.
More Information
About Ray Bradbury and the Collection
Ray Douglas Bradbury (1920 – 2012) was one of the most celebrated American authors and screenwriters of the 20th century. He worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery. Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955).
Fahrenheit 451 centers on a firefighter in a dystopian world, where books are burned to prevent knowledge, and was written on a typewriter in the basement of Powell Library. Bradbury recounts his time writing the book in Powell(opens in a new tab) in a 2002 article for UCLA Magazine: “It was a passionate and exciting time for me. Imagine what it was like to be writing a book about book burning and doing it in a library where the passions of all those authors, living and dead, surrounded me.”
Bradbury later gifted his collection to the UCLA Library. The Ray Bradbury Papers(opens in a new tab) consists of manuscripts, correspondence and ephemera by and related to Ray Bradbury. It includes various titles, such as The Martian Chronicles. It also includes a copy of a Moby Dick screenplay and a radio script for The Whole Town's Sleeping.
Related to this collection is an interview with Ray Bradbury(opens in a new tab) in the UCLA Library Center for Oral History Research. In the interview, Bradbury discusses his childhood and early inspirations, his career as a writer, his political thoughts and his friendships.
