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The Fales Collection at New York University's Elmer Holmes Bobst Library has received a collection of historically significant materials from Richard Hell, author, editor, and "father" of punk rock. Hell's papers not only document his long and varied career, but also show the literary roots of the punk scene and its link to the earlier European avant-garde.

Marvin Taylor, Director of the Fales Collection said about the acquisition, "Richard Hell is most often thought of only as the first punk-rock star, but that's too simplistic. Richard is an author who links the European avant-garde tradition of France at the end of the nineteenth century to New York at the end of the twentieth. His papers show his deep knowledge of this tradition and how he became a touchstone for so many artists who were trying to express similar ideas. Richard's archive is one of the pillars of the downtown collection here at NYU."

The collection contains over 30 linear feet of diaries, manuscripts, letters, photographs, posters, videos, songsheets and other materials created by Hell during his career. Among the papers are the manuscripts for Hell's novels; archives of the pamphlets Hell published by Patti Smith, Tom Verlaine, Rene Ricard, Nick Tosches, and Ron Padgett, among others; and an extensive collection of sound recordings.

The collection is currently unprocessed. It will be about a year before it's open to scholars.

The Richard Hell papers are part of the Downtown New York Collection, which documents the downtown NYC arts scene from 1974 to present. It is the only collection of its kind in a research library and is heavily used by students, scholars and others interested in the creative world of downtown New York.

(photo, L-R: Dee Dee Ramone, Richard Hell. 1975. photo by Roberta Bayley)