Fortunately, the most precious documents, ie. the literary manuscripts, survived the destruction of Svevo’s villa and with the lamentable exception of the manuscripts of the three novels, which must be considered as definitively lost, the Museum possesses the original drafts of all of Svevo’s other writings: his plays, essays and articles, novellas, fables, diaries and personal notes, as well as his extremely rich correspondence which, in addition to the many letters to his wife Livia, also includes letters from major literary figures, such as Joyce, Montale, André Gide, Prezzolini, Valerio Jahier, Vasco Pratolini, Giovanni Comisso, etc.
Many family photographs have also come down to us, providing scholars with an invaluable source for reconstructing Svevo’s life and relations, and for documenting the most varied critical and biographical hypotheses.
The Museum library is divided into several sections: Svevo’s personal library (SVI); a much larger section dedicated to Svevo’s works in the original Italian, together with many translations (SVII); literary criticism and biographical studies, in all forms (book, journal, newspaper and even on the internet) and academic theses.
This last section also includes the so-called ‘scrapbooks’, or the large registers in which Svevo’s widow and daughter over many years patiently pasted all the articles regarding the Triestine writer, and which today provide scholars with a fundamental source for research.
The collection of criticism, already very extensive at the time of the bequest, is constantly updated and supplemented by the Museum, constituting an indispensable resource for Svevo scholars from around the world.
