Tom Staley, who built UT's Ransom Center into a global powerhouse, has died at age 86

Austin American-Statesman

Tom Staley built the Ransom Center at the University of Texas into a collecting power that rivals Harvard University, Yale University and the British Museum in some fields.

Tom Staley, visionary director of the Ransom Center at the University of Texas for 25 years, died of bladder cancer Tuesday. He was 86.

Perhaps even more than Harry Ransom — the UT chancellor, book collector and center's namesake who died in 1976 — Staley turned the archives into a global powerhouse that rivals the collecting achievements of Harvard University, Yale University and the British Museum.

A widely respected authority on novelist James Joyce, Staley tracked down and acquired the papers of dozens of major authors as well as hundreds of minor ones. In a very competitive field, he won the collections of actor Robert De Niro and photojournalist David Douglas Duncan as well as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's Watergate papers.

A native of Pittsburgh who launched his academic career at the University of Tulsa, Staley transformed the center's building at West 21st and Guadalupe streets from a forbidding fortress into an airy and welcoming public showcase with a ground-floor museum and a second-floor reading room. He was the director from 1988 to 2013.

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“Tom Staley became director of the HRC at a time when that institution had passed through a lengthy period of troubles," said Don Carleton, director of the UT Briscoe Center for American History on the other side of campus. "He soon restored the HRC to its previous status as one of the cultural gems of UT.

"Tom was also a master at collecting and fundraising, and his visionary actions changed the HRC from its monastic-like existence as a rare book and document collection into a welcoming and open institution with first-class exhibition galleries and public programs.”

With Lake Flato Architects on the design team, Tom Staley transformed the Ransom Center from a forbidding fortress into an airy and welcoming public space with a museum and reading room.

David Coleman, director of the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, said Staley's reputation as a collector rivaled that of founder Ransom.

"He brought an intense and ceaseless energy not only to collecting and studying literature but seemingly to everything he did," Coleman said. "He also had great charisma and charm, and while the Ransom's collections were their own magnet in attracting writers and other creators, no one was Tom's equal in closing the deal."

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Roger Louis, award-winning scholar and retired director of UT's British Studies program, lauded Staley's massing of the papers and manuscripts of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Edmund Wilson in addition to Joyce.

"One of his greatest achievements was the creation of the James Joyce Quarterly, of which he was the founding editor," Louis said. "His tenure at the HRC will be remembered not only for his skill in collecting manuscripts but also for his warm friendships with faculty members and sponsors of the HRC."

Staley wrote or edited 15 books on such subjects as Joyce, writer Italo Svevo, and British novelists Jean Rhys and Dorothy Richardson. After his retirement from the center, in 2013, he continued to teach a UT course in literary modernism.

Tom Staley chats with author Leon Uris, right. For the Ransom Center, Staley collected the papers and books of dozens of major authors and hundreds of minor ones.

Colleagues and friends remember his charm but also his ambition.

"Tom Staley was formidable," said Jessie Otto Hite, who built UT's Blanton Museum of Art during much of Staley's tenure. "He was an acknowledged scholar in his field, but he also grew to become a fierce competitor for acquisitions for his beloved Ransom Center. He was greatly loved by legions of donors, who helped him realize his dreams.

"At times we had minor differences, but he always greeted me with a warm handshake and a twinkle in his eye, and that seemed to dispel whatever had been at issue. It was a privilege to be his colleague."

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Staley served on the editorial boards of such journals as Twentieth Century Literature and the Journal of Modern Literature, the board of the Library of America and the founding board of the American Writers Museum Foundation in Chicago.

In 2007, The New Yorker magazine's D.T. Max wrote of Staley: “The Ransom Center, under Staley’s leadership, easily outmaneuvers rivals such as Yale, Harvard and the British Library. It operates more like a college sports team, with Staley as the coach — an approach that fits the temperament of Texas.”

Archivist Stephen Cooper, left, and Tom Staley go through the papers of writer David Foster Wallace at the Ransom Center in 2010.

Over the decades, Britain's authoritative Times Literary Supplement frequently lamented the fact that the papers of so many of that country's great authors ended up in Austin.

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Staley is survived by his wife, Muffi, along with their children, Tom Staley Jr., Carrie Staley, Mary Wheeler and Tim Staley, and six grandchildren.

"As in his public life, Dad was admired, loved and revered at home," said his son Tim, director of the Library Foundation, which supports and promotes the Austin Public Library. "His family always had his whole, undivided and loving attention."

A memorial service is planned for April 16 at the Ransom Center.