Timothy Leary archive sold to New York Public Library

On June 16, 2011 the New York Public Library announced that it has acquired the Timothy Leary archive for $900,000. The well organized, invaluable collection contains >335 well organized boxes equivalent to 412 linear feet of letters, manuscripts, research documents, notes, legal and financial records, printed materials, photographs, video and audio tapes, CDs and DVDs, posters and flyers, and artifacts, dating from Leary’s youth in the 1920s until his death in 1996.

Leary kept meticulous records at many points during his life. There are comprehensive research files, legal briefs, budgets and memos about the many institutes and organizations he founded, but there are also notes and documents from when he was on the run after escaping from a California prison with help from the Weather Underground. A folder labeled as notes from his “C.I.A. kidnapping” in 1973 is full of cryptic jottings recounting the details of his arrest in Afghanistan, at an airport in Kabul, after he fled the United States.