University of Texas paid 2.2 million dollars for Gabriel Garcia Marquez's archive

Baku.26 February.REPORT.AZ/ The University of Texas' literary archive said Wednesday it paid $2.2 million for the works of Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a price the school sought to keep secret until ordered to make it public by the state attorney general's office.

Officials at the university's Harry Ransom Center refused in November to reveal the price to journalists, saying it would hurt negotiations for future purchases. The attorney general ruled Feb. 19 that the school failed to prove harm by disclosure and ordered the contract released.

Ransom Center spokeswoman Jen Tisdale revealed the $2.2 million figure to the AP, but the university did not immediately release the contract.

The archive spans more than 50 years and 10 books, including Garcia Marquez's acclaimed 1967 novel, "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

The university previously had disclosed the prices of such purchases and the effort to keep the cost of the Garcia Marquez archive secret drew attention from literary and legal circles for its potential impact on future archive purchases and Texas public records law.

In 2005, the Ransom Center paid $5 million for the Watergate coverage from reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. It paid $2.5 million for the archive of writer Norman Mailer in 2008 and $1.5 million for Nobel prize-winning author J.M.Coetzee's archive in 2011.