Once upon a time, there were lots of picture books for children but not many stories for young-adult readers. Then along came Judy Blume. In the 1970s, the author of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” spun pitch-perfect prose for adolescents and middle-schoolers, detonating a genre that exploded with wizards, babysitters, vampires and the junior-high drama of BFFs and frenemies.

The author, who will turn 80 in February, said, “50 years of writing…could be enough.” She is selling her literary archive to Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library later this month.

Ms. Blume has published dozens of books, ranging from humorous children’s tales (a second-grader’s quixotic quest in “Freckle Juice”) to grown-up novels (enduring friendship in “Summer Sisters”). But she made her name with stories that resonated with pre-teens. She also took on subjects, including divorce and sexuality, that at the time were taboo for young readers. Ms. Blume’s candor drew fire from some quarters but earned her a world-wide following.

Judy Blume, visiting a 6th-grade classroom in 1977, took on subjects including divorce and sexuality that were taboo at the time. Photo: Jane Tarbox/The Denver Post/Getty Images

The Beinecke, home to the papers of Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and others, also has a rich collection of children’s literature. Timothy Young, curator of modern books and manuscripts at the library, said the acquisition will turbocharge its growing young-adult holdings.

For some readers, Ms. Blume defines the genre. “If you ask anybody on the street to name a young-adult writer,” Mr. Young said, the response often is Judy Blume: “She is the iconic person that you’ve read and you loved or you didn’t love but you knew her work.”


Young-adult literature is a largely unexamined area of archival study, Mr. Young said, and one likely to attract faculty, researchers and visitors to Yale. Although Ms. Blume’s papers were atop Mr. Young’s list of dream acquisitions, he had warned himself, “I can’t even think about Judy Blume because she is the Stephen King” of young-adult fiction.

Ms. Blume said she is no pack rat—in part because she moved houses often—but from the start she held on to the rejection letters that met many of her early efforts for very young children. She also kept the mockups of books that she submitted to publishers in her twenties. For those early attempts, she wrote rhyming verses, illustrated them with colored pencils and used brass fasteners to hold the manuscript together. Her creations “would come back rejected and every now and then I’d get a really nice rejection letter,” she recalled.

An undated letter from a young fan Photo: Glenn Horowitz Bookseller

Ms. Blume also saved boxes of fan mail in which some readers revealed their hopes and fears. One 10-year-old wrote in ballpoint pen on a sheet of Garfield the Cat stationery “in every one of your books you give us a new way to cope with life.” Ms. Blume and Mr. Young said they are working with Yale’s legal advisers to allow access to the letters while preserving the young writers’ privacy.

Mr. Young imagines the archive introducing undergraduates to original material or sparking ideas for dissertations. Ms. Blume said that Dick Jackson, her longtime editor at Bradbury Press who plucked her from the slush pile, used to joke that “someday, some Ph.D. student is going to write a thesis on teeth in Judy Blume books.” The author’s father was a dentist and apparently, Ms. Blume said, “I’m always describing people by teeth and talking about teeth.”


Mr. Young expects that scholars and others will comb the collection to track how Ms. Blume and her editors honed manuscripts. While writers of picture books often have archives that are “very image-intense,” Mr. Young said, Ms. Blume’s papers reveal she is “all about text. She’s a novelist. And so when you look at her drafts and her printouts she works and reworks and reworks and there’s a lot of energy going into her manuscripts.”

In addition, the collection bears out how Ms. Blume calibrated her prose as her readers—and characters—grew up. “One of the great things you can see is how she was writing to a specific age and a specific reader,” Mr. Young said. For example, one character, a toddling dervish nicknamed Fudge, was inspired in part by Ms. Blume’s son and then grandson. Fudge’s mischief mortifies his older brother, Peter, who moves from fourth grade to seventh during a five-book series, which was written between 1972 and 2002.

Ms. Blume’s archive could find its way into the Beinecke’s slate of exhibitions and programs. “I don’t have a plan right now but I could imagine four or five different thematic shows in which Judy’s papers would be a keystone,” Mr. Young said, perhaps on the subject of young adulthood, storytelling or changing concepts of young childhood over the 20th century.

“We start as readers and get more sophisticated as we go along but we can’t forget what we were reading when we were five years old, 10 years old, 15 years old,” he said. “I see Judy’s papers…. as part of a stream that connects to Gertrude Stein and James Joyce. They’re not in this other part of the library that is sectioned off.”


The archive’s journey to Yale began in mid-2015, when Glenn Horowitz, a New York book dealer, read a profile of Ms. Blume. At the time, she was about to publish “In the Unlikely Event,” her fourth novel for adults. Mr. Horowitz has placed dozens of archives, including those of Don DeLillo and William Faulkner, with institutions. Last year, he arranged the sale of Bob Dylan’s collection in a deal with a reported value between $15 million and $20 million.

A folder of unpublished manuscripts by Judy Blume from the 1960s. Photo: Glenn Horowitz Bookseller

While reading about Ms. Blume, Mr. Horowitz said, “a thunderbolt struck me that this was a person whose stature in American letters was at the very highest level.” He learned that Ms. Blume had almost 50 boxes of manuscripts, letters, screen adaptations, photographs, scrapbooks and other material, most stored in Key West, Fla., where she and her husband co-founded a nonprofit, independent bookstore.

Last December, when the Beinecke’s Mr. Young proposed the acquisition, his colleagues thought the notion was too good to be true. They said, “ ‘Tim, quit kidding us,’ ” he recalled. “So I said, ‘No, no, no, really! Judy Blume’s papers!’” After months of discussions, the talks took a white-knuckle turn in early September as Hurricane Irma menaced the Florida Keys. The boxes were moved to a higher floor in a storage facility and emerged unscathed from the storm.

Ms. Blume said the $500,000 Yale is paying for the archive will go to the Kids Fund, her foundation through which she makes charitable contributions.


Mr. Young aims to have some material accessible for research early next year. The Beinecke’s holdings are open to anyone with a serious interest in them and aren’t restricted to students and scholars. “There are some rules, of course,” he added, and “you have to have clean hands” and “take notes with pencil and paper—or with a laptop.”

Write to Brenda Cronin at brenda.cronin@wsj.com