Both in her life and writing, Janette Turner Hospital, Carolina Distinguished Professor in USC’s English Department, spans several different continents and cultures. This exhibit shows something of this range, as well as providing more extensive coverage of the publication and critical response to her most recent novel, Due Preparations for the Plague (2003).

The publication history of her books is correspondingly complex, involving as she became well-known not only in Canada (where her first books appeared), but also in her native Australia, in the U.S., Britain and Europe, different publishers, publication formats, and release dates, in the different geographical regions by which the publishing industry negotiates international rights. For some of her books (notably Oyster, 1996, and Due Preparations), this exhibit includes variant editions to show something of this international dimension.

The exhibit draws material from four different sources: the Janette Turner Hospital books in Thomas Cooper Library’s Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, holdings that were greatly strengthened by the donation in December 2003 of inscribed first editions and a copy of the final typescript of Due Preparations, by Professor and Mrs. Matthew J. Bruccoli; material loaned for this exhibition from the personal Janette Turner Hospital collections of two other bibliophiles from the Department of English–Professor Donald J. Greiner (specifically the many publication variants of Due Preparations in case 6), and Professor Benjamin Franklin V (specifically publicity material for several of the novels, some displayed in reproduction); and from a group of 18th- and 19th-century maps of Australia recently donated to the library by Fred C. Holder.

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