The British Library has bought the complete archive of playwright and screenwriter Harold Pinter for $2.3 million Cdn.

The archive comprises more than 150 boxes of manuscripts, scrapbooks and letters, including Pinter's correspondence with literary figures such as Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard and John Osborne.

Harold Pinter, in a 2005 file photo, has sold his archive to the British Library.
(Canadian Press)

Pinter, a British writer who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2005, is known for plays such as The Homecoming and The Birthday Party, and for screenplays for films such as Sleuth and The French Lieutenant's Woman.

Pinter, now 77, continues to write poetry but has stopped writing plays and scripts. A longtime political activist, he has been outspoken against the war in Iraq and the Bush administration in the U.S.

The archive, unveiled for a preview Monday in London, includes an unpublished autobiography of his youth, The Queen of all the Fairies.

The new material builds on a collection of Pinter's manuscripts and papers that he put on loan to the British Library in 1993.

"This is a wonderful collection that sheds new light on each stage of Harold Pinter's unparalleled career over the past 50 years," said Jamie Andrews, head of modern literary manuscripts at the British Library, the U.K.'s national library.

The National Heritage Memorial Fund, which helps preserve Britain's cultural artifacts, contributed $446,385 toward the purchase.

It is the first time the heritage fund has sponsored purchase of an archive from a living writer.

The British Library, founded in 1973 when it was split off from the British Museum, has a collection that includes the Magna Carta, notebooks belonging to Leonardo da Vinci and original drafts of Beatles lyrics.

A display of some of Pinter's archive, His Own Domain: Harold Pinter, A Life in Theatre, will be at the British Library in London from Jan. 11 to April 13.