Conditions Governing Access

The collection is open for research use.

Preferred Citation

MSS 16662, Alexander Theroux letters to Judy Barnes, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

This collection was a gift from Judith Barnes Music to the Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia Library on October 31, 2018.

Biographical / Historical

Alexander Louis Theroux is an American novelist and poet. He was born in 1939 in Medford, Massachusetts to Catholic parents, his mother, Anne (born Dittami), was Italian American, and his father, Albert Eugene Theroux, was French Canadian. He entered the Trappist Monastery at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts in 1958, and then the Franciscan Seminary at Callicoon, New York in 1960. He earned his bachelor of arts at St. Francis College in 1964, a masters of arts in English literature in 1965, and his doctorate in English literature, 1968 at the University of Virginia, where he won the Schubert Playwrighting Fellowship in 1967. He taught at the University of Virginia in 1968 and at Harvard University as Brigg-Copeland Lecturer from 1973 to 1979. He was writer-in-residence at Phillips Academy in Andover from 1979 to 1982. He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1982 to 1987 and at Yale University from 1987 to 1991.He has also lived in England, Estonia, and France.

He is known for his novel Darconville's Cat (1981), which was selected by Anthony Burgess for his Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 – A Personal Choice in 1984 and by Larry McCaffery for 20th Century's Greatest Hits.[2]

He was awarded the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction in 1991 and the Clifton Fadiman Medal for Fiction in 2002 by the Mercantile Library in New York City. He is the brother of novelist Paul Theroux and writer Peter Theroux as well as the uncle of documentarian Louis Theroux, novelist Marcel Theroux, and actor Justin Theroux.

Source: "Alexander Theroux" Wikipedia. Accessed 2/8/2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Theroux

Content Description

11 letters from Alexander Theroux to Judy Barnes. Barnes, whose name is now Judith Music, describes the letters as such: "We had met in 1972 when he was on the faculty of Longwood College and I was a reference librarian there." The dates of the letters are: 1 Letter (1973), 4 Letters (1974), 2 Letters (1978), 1 Letter (1979), 2 Letters (1980).

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• letters (correspondence)