William Saroyan Collections


The Heritage Center holds one of the major institutional collections of materials documenting the career of Fresno-born author William Saroyan (1908-1981), consisting of approximately 3,000 items.

It features the following:

  • Practically all his stand-alone publications (books, pamphlets, broadsides, and plays) in English, and some foreign languages as well;
  • Appearances in anthologies and magazines;
  • Letters and manuscripts, including his complete correspondence with his daughter, Lucy (1946-2003) and with Broadway columnist Leonard Lyons (1906-1976).
  • Articles and books about Saroyan;
  • Various Saroyan-related ephemera (clippings, play programs, promotional items, etc.); and
  • Sound/Video items (records, cassettes, sheet music, videorecordings, etc.).

There is a catalogue of the Heritage Center's Saroyan holdings available for in-library use. Some of the items are also described in the Library's main catalog.

Noteworthy Saroyan collections elsewhere:

William Saroyan Papers: His private archive and most important among Saroyan collections, now housed at the Stanford University Library. A finding aid is available at the Online Archive of California.

The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley

UCLA Library Special Collections

Henry Madden Library, at CSU Fresno

Other Resources: