Tulane University Special Collections has officially acquired the professional and personal papers of Karen Essex—an internationally bestselling author, screenwriter, and New Orleans native whose career has been defined by a singular, rigorous mission: the reclamation of women’s historical achievements.  

For decades, Essex’s work has served as a sophisticated interrogation of the historical record. Her novels do not merely dramatize the past; they seek to repair it. By focusing on women whose power was downplayed, misunderstood, or intentionally smeared by their contemporaries, Essex has reframed figures like Cleopatra and the sisters of the d'Este family not as muses or seductresses, but as the master strategists and intellectual leaders they were. 

"The Essex papers represent a major expansion of our premier holdings," says Leon Miller, Curator of the Louisiana Research Collection. "Standing alongside the papers of George Washington Cable, Anne Rice, and John Kennedy Toole, the Essex archive is more than a record of a successful writing career; it is a vital resource for understanding how Louisiana voices shape global cultural narratives and how we, as a society, reconstruct the lives of women who were nearly lost to history." 

From Newcomb to the World Stage 

A Newcomb College alumna, Essex’s journey from New Orleans to the global bestseller lists is documented in meticulous detail within the collection. The archive tracks the evolution of her historical fiction—now translated into 29 languages—showing the exhaustive research required to "re-build" a woman’s life from the fragments of the past. 

Researchers will find a wealth of primary source materials, including her award-winning investigative and entertainment journalism and the extensive files behind Leonardo’s Swans, which earned her the prestigious Premio Roma. 

The Hollywood Epic and Pop Culture Origins 

Beyond the Italian Renaissance, the collection offers a rare look at the intersection of literature and the silver screen. Included in the acquisition are complete screenplay development files for Kleopatra and Pharaoh, developed for Warner Bros. and most recently Netflix. She also developed Anne Rice’s novel, The Mummy, or Ramses the Dead, for James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment. These files provide a masterclass in the translation of historical research into the language of the Hollywood epic. 

For scholars of 20th-century pop culture, the archive contains another treasure: the original investigative research files for Essex’s biography of Bettie Page, including her L. A. Weekly article not only earning her highest honors from the Los Angeles Press Club but also resulted in finding the reclusive Ms. Page, who had no idea of her revived fame. Essex’s work not only sparked the global pin-up revival of the 1990s, but also reframed Page not as a passive object, but as an accidental revolutionary of female bodily agency. 

A Resource for the Future 

By bringing the Essex papers to Tulane, Special Collections ensures that her "detective work" is preserved for the next generation of historians, sociologists, gender studies scholars, media scholars, and more. The collection offers a unique window into the process of identifying gaps in the historical record and the creative courage required to fill them. 

As these papers are made available to the public, they serve as a reminder of the power of archives—not just to store the past, but to correct it. 

Karen Essex will be appearing at this summer’s New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University