Papers of George Gömöri

George Gömöri was born in Budapest and studied Polish and Hungarian literature at Eötvös Loránd University. During the Hungarian revolution of 1956 he was co-editor of Egyetemi Ifjuság (University Youth), and left Hungary in mid-November 1956, after the second Russian intervention. In the United Kingdom he was a student of Polish and Hungarian language and literature under the aegis of the University of London (B.A. 1958), and was accepted for higher studies in Oxford in 1957, where he undertook research under Max Hayward as a member of St Antony's College, and was awarded a B.Litt in 1962. Between 1963 and 1965 he was in the United States, first as a Lecturer at Berkeley, and then as Senior Research Fellow at Harvard (1964-5). After holding the post of Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham, he was from 1969 to 2001 a University Teaching Officer in the University of Cambridge. Since 2005 he has lived in London, and in 2008 he was elected as Foreign Member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cracow.

Gömöri's poetry and prose is widely published in Hungarian. My Manifold City: Poems, a volume of translations of his verse into English, made by Gömöri and Clive Wilmer, was published in Cambridge by the Alba Press in 1996, and a second volume of poetry in English translation, Polishing October, was published by the Shoestring Press, Nottingham, in 2008. Other English-language works by Gömöri include Polish and Hungarian Poetry, 1945 to 1956 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966); Cyprian Norwid (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974); Polish and Hungarian Poets of the Holocaust: A Paper read at Indiana University, Bloomington, November 7, 1983 (Bloomington: Polish Studies Center, Indiana University, 1986); and Magnetic Poles: Essays on Modern Polish and Comparative Literature (London: Polish Cultural Foundation, 2000).

Correspondence and related items, chiefly consisting of letters to Gömöri on literary and academic topics.

The larger part of the papers was donated to Cambridge University Library by George Gömöri in September 2005. A further tranche was acquired from Gömöri by purchase in 2008, supplemented by subsequent smaller donations. Items from the 2005 accession have CUL ownership stamps in red ink, items from the 2008 and later accessions have CUL ownership stamps in black ink.

The collection contains personal correspondence. The provisions of the Data Protection Act (1998) apply to access.

In English and Hungarian

Please cite as Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Papers of George Gömöri, MS Add.9716

Gömöri made a donation of manuscripts to Birmingham University Library in 1969. Much of his correspondence in Hungarian, including letters by Istvan Vas, is in the Országos Széchényi Könyvtár (the Hungarian National Library, Budapest). The Polish National Library in Warsaw holds letters to Gömöri from Jerzy Giedroyc (Editor of the emigre journal Kultura) and Zbigniew Herbert. Letters to Gömöri from Czeslaw Milosz are in the Jagiello Library, Cracow.