Leonard Cohen’s career took him from Montreal to Greece to Los Angeles, but he chose to leave much of his life’s work, including early poetry and novel manuscripts, in Toronto.

The singer, songwriter, poet and novelist, buried last week in Montreal following his death on Nov. 7, for years donated thousands of relics collected throughout his career to the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

The collection contains countless handwritten notes, more than 100 self-portraits, fan mail and early drafts of Cohen’s work. It includes his 1960s experimental novel Beautiful Losers, acquired before publication, and 1956 poetry book Let Us Compare Mythologies.

Among Cohen’s personal notes are those he wrote while part of the debate club at McGill University, where he graduated in 1955.

Some of his less formal writing is scribbled on napkins and in notebooks, handwritten in Greece during the 1960s.

“You can just see a little about what he was thinking,” said Jennifer Toews, the library’s modern manuscripts librarian. “There’s some poetry, some song lyrics and everyday things too. I just like it because it was such a specific time in his life that everybody knows about.”

The first batch came to U of T in the early 1960s when Cohen was about 26. After being turned down by McGill, as the story goes, Cohen, through his book dealer, sold some of his earliest papers to U of T, according to Toews. Impressed by how he was treated, Cohen continued to donate his archives freely to the university throughout his life.

Many of Cohen’s earliest ideas are “prophetic,” said Toews.

“He has a certain vision, I have to say,” she said. “He writes something about an American president, in the future, who is African-American and wears Brooks Brothers clothes and stuff, and I thought ‘Wow, that sounds like Obama’ and this was in the early 1960s that he wrote that. He’s a brilliant man, in all kinds of ways.”

The collection also contains a sealed box of letters to and from friends and family, which Cohen directed be opened only after his death. But Toews said it could still be another 20 to 30 years until the box’s contents are revealed, as Cohen requested it remain private until the deaths of his correspondents as well.

Much of the rest of the collection is already viewable to the public, including researchers, students and fans. Toews said the library believes more is on the way now that Cohen has died, including correspondences between him and Bob Dylan.

Toews said one of her favourite remnants is a napkin from a restaurant that contains an agreement between Cohen and a friend to meet again at the same place 10 years later.

“Just things like that, he’s really aware of moments in time,” said Toews. “He’s just such an icon, people like to find ways of looking at him.”

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