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This collection comprises papers pertaining to Rowley's biographies: 'Christina Stead: A Biography (1994)', 'Richard Wright: The Life and Times (2001),' 'Tête-à-tête: The Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre' (2005), 'Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage' (2010). They include Rowley's correspondence with her subjects and those who knew them. In the first consignment the major correspondents are Edith Anderson, Leda and Stanley Burnshaw, Gwen Walker-Smith, Florence James, Jessie and Ettore Rella, Ruth Hall, David Stead, Ron Geering, Clifton Fadiman, Kate Llwellyn, Mary Bransten, Nadine Mendelson, Elizabeth Harrower, Gai Steel, Michael Bott, Margaret Harris, Michael Gold, Edith Anderson, Anne and Harry Bloom, Gilbert Stead, Fred Warburg, Oliver Stallybrass, Leah and Philip Harvey, and Aida Kotlarsky.In the second consignment of note is an original letter from Simone de Beauvoir, and original letters of Christina Stead. Other correspondents include Clem Christesen, Harper Lee, Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, William Vanden Heuvel, Constance Webb, Richard Wright, Barbara Baer, Oliver Stallybrass and Toril Moi, There are photographs, research files, transcripts and notes of interviews, manuscripts and papers for other work on topics such as 'The Hollywood Ten' and a copy of Rowley's thesis 'The Female Experience in the Autobiographies of Simone de Beauvoir and Violette Leduc'. Journals, diaries, notes and log books provide further insight into Rowley's research work conducted in Australia and overseas.