During one Saturday afternoon in January, more than 300 people arrived at Addlestone Library to celebrate the latest offering from James Rigney Jr., a literary legend better known by his nom de plume Robert Jordan.
Harriet McDougal, Rigney’s widow, was on hand to promote the final book in Rigney’s Wheel of Time series, Memory of Light. Accompanying her was Brandon Sanderson, the author handpicked by McDougal to finish Memory of Light, which was only partially complete upon Rigney’s death in 2007.
Harriet McDougal, widow and editor of James Rigney (a.k.a. Robert Jordan)
So intense is the fandom of Wheel of Time, which has been translated into more than 30 languages and sold more than 44 million copies worldwide, that those 300 people would have likely shown up if it was Rigney’s last grocery list that was being unveiled. For these fans, a bonus was in store; the library’s Special Collections used the book signing event to display one of its newest acquisitions: the Rigney Collection. Among the collection’s highlights are dozens of edited manuscripts, promotional material for Rigney’s books, photographs, videos, correspondence, graphic novels and the author’s old Apple computer with more than 4,000 pages of notes. As processing archivist Josh Minor details on the Special Collections blog The True Source, the collection even includes swords, spears, daggers and battleaxes inspired from the fantasy series.
It goes without saying, then, that the Rigney Collection, which was donated by McDougal, doesn’t have quite the same feel as most of the historic documents housed on the third floor of the library. That’s just fine with Special Collections, whose staff was ecstatic to receive a gift concerning one of the city’s most successful authors.
“We’re having a hard time containing our excitement,” says Harlan Greene ’74, Special Collections senior manuscript and reference archivist. “Archives kind of have the fusty musty thing going on. We think the Rigney Collection will bring in some different people.”
Beyond the Wheel of Time series, Rigney used pseudonyms to write many other books, including a number of titles within the Conan the Barbarian series and a historical fiction trilogy set in Charleston at the turn of the 19th century: The Fallon Blood, The Fallon Pride and The Fallon Legacy. But it was when The Eye of the World, the first book in the Wheel of Time series, was published in 1990 that Rigney became famous and began earning comparisons to J.R.R. Tolkien.
The collection McDougal donated includes an early draft of The Eye of the World as well as a typescript of the book that contains her editing marks.
The couple met on professional terms before becoming romantic, and she remained his editor after their marriage. McDougal hopes that fans of her late husband can visit the Rigney Collection to learn about his writing process and delve deeper into his work.
“I wanted the papers to be in the College community,” says McDougal. “Once the collection is processed, researchers, students and fans will have an insider’s look into one of the legendary epic fantasy series.”
