In 1981 I was working as a part-time super at 258 Broadway and taking graduate courses at NYU. For a time, in early spring, I was the only person living in the eight-story building. It was being converted from offices into co-op apartments and the real estate company wanted a super for security and to be available for new owners when they moved in. No one was there at night, but me. The empty, winding hallways smelled of new paint and spackle. An enormous pile of desks, chairs and file cabinets on the open first floor. The streetlights hitting the pile of furniture created angular shadows. At night, I’d hear unaccountable sounds, creaks and groans. I avoided the dusty basement where water bugs ran and where two 12 foot cast iron wheels sat in the floor - remnants of an antiquated building power system. I remember sitting on a tool chest in the eighth floor front apartment, drinking a beer and looking out across City Hall Park to the moving car lights on the Brooklyn Bridge. I’d been there a few months when I got a call from a manager at the real estate company. He knew I was taking English classes. “Hey,” he said. “A famous writer is moving into the building.” “Oh yeah,” I said. “Who’s that?” “Shirley Conran! Know who that is?” “I don’t.” “She got a big advance on her new book. She’s a big deal. She’s like Daniele Steel or Jackie Collins.” “Okay,” I said. “Her book is being made into a mini-series!.” “All right.” To my mind a famous writer was James Joyce, Flannery O’Connor or Wallace Stevens. At NYU I was studying Chaucer and modern poetry. Daniele Steel and Jackie Collins were not writers that I cared about. I was writing fiction and poems, myself, for what that was worth. A few days after this conversation I got a call from Ms. Conran. It went something like this: “Hello, this is Shirley Conran. Shirley Conran the author. I just moved in on the sixth floor.” “Yes, hi. This is Dan.” “Hello Dan. Would you mind coming up? There is a rather unacceptable mess in the loo. It needs to be addressed.” “Yeah, I can come up.” “Thank you.” I had been told by the real estate company that anything inside an apartment was the responsibility of the owner. Ms. Conran’s bathroom floor was not my problem. But she didn’t know that, and I did want to be on good terms with the co-op owners. I gathered cleaning materials, threw them into a pail and headed up to meet the famous author. She led me to the bathroom and pointed down at the floor. There were drops of spackle near the sink, the result of a quick drywall job. I got down and started scraping and scrubbing. Not a big deal, and not real difficult. As I worked, she told me she had written about kitchens and bathrooms. In fact, she said, she had been married to the owner of design stores in London. Terrence Conran? Habitat stores? I looked up and nodded, in response, but had no idea who Terrence Conran was, and had not heard of a chain of stores called Habitat. But that was okay. I cleaned the floor and she thanked me and we seemed to be on good terms. Lace, which would be her most famous and successful book, was about to be published. I remember mopping the lobby one afternoon as she stood waiting for a ride to a publisher’s party. “I was treated pretty well in London,” she told me, “But the New York publisher is giving me the royal treatment!” A long, black limousine appeared and off she went, up Broadway, to her book party. Over the next few months, I was called upon to let workmen and interior design people into her “flat.” The designer wore a white, full length fur coat and spun around directing workers, pointing here and there dramatically. The apartment was painted deep, dark red and Persian miniatures were hung on every wall in the living space. Ms. Conran and had some friendly conversations about writers and writing. I let her know I was a student, taking classes in literature. After her book appeared, and hit the bestseller list, I saw her less often. The New York apartment was one of her residences, not where she lived year- round. People were certainly talking about the book and about the mini-series. The book was a hot topic - the sex scenes in the book were a hot topic. A few months went by and one day Ms. Conran called me up to her apartment. “I have something for you,” she said. She had me sit at a table and brought out a pile of typewritten pages. “Since you are interested in writing, I’ve decided to give my manuscript to you.” I was somewhat dumbfounded and not sure what to make of this generous gesture. My first thought was, “I wonder how much money I can get for this.” Also, who would want this. We sat looking at the manuscript cover which was just the modest, unadorned typewritten word, LACE. “Thank you,” I said. “That’s really nice of you.” “Now don’t run off and sell it,” she said. “I’ve had correspondence with university professors who have expressed interest.” She was hunched over, writing in red ink. “I’m writing a note saying I am giving this manuscript, with author’s handwritten notes, to Dan Hubbs on this day of August. . .” While I was grateful, I was thinking there must be people who would appreciate this more than me. For instance, people who had read the book, and people who thought Shirley Conran and Lace were a big deal. “Don’t forget,” she said, “Charles Dickens was a popular author in his day. And his manuscripts are held in prestigious libraries.” “That’s right,” I said. But I really didn’t think she should be comparing herself to Charles Dickens. She had a notebook, with handwritten notes and attached correspondence that she signed over to me as well. I worked as a super for three years and then moved on. I did some traveling. Worked on a fish processing boat in Alaska. Kept writing. Went to library school. Got married. Shirley Conran continued to write and publish popular novels, but she never repeated the success and renown of Lace. Over the years, I kept the Lace manuscript and my partner would ask me about it. “Do we really need to keep this?” She would ask. “What is it again?” “Yeah, I’d like to keep it,” I’d say. “It was a famous novel, years back.” “Is it worth anything? Do you think anyone would want it?” “I’m not sure.” I’d occasionally move it to another out of the way place in the house and then wouldn’t think about it again as years passed. In the early 1990s, I wrote to Shirley Conran asking if she could offer advice on getting published. She wrote back on a postcard from Monaco. “Hello. Very busy, etc.” More years passed and there were more conversations about what to do with the pile of pages kept in a see-through, zippered plastic container. “Do you really need to keep this?” “Yeah. I mean I feel like I should.” “Why?” “Well, she asked me not to sell it.” “In 1983? I mean, I think you’re safe to get rid of it.” “Maybe I can sell it. I’ll check.” I did contact some rare book dealers and auction houses, but there was no interest. By this time I had worked in public libraries for years and knew that books with out-of-date information or in poor condition were not kept. Libraries need to free up space. Popular books came and went. Popular authors appear on the scene and fade away, not unlike actors and actresses. In the 56 libraries in the system I worked for, there were no copies of Lace. All the same, I couldn’t bring myself to part with the manuscript. On May 22, 2024, this headline in the New York Times caught my eye: “Shirley Conran, Author Best Known for Steamy ‘Lace,’ Dies at 91.” I stopped what I was doing and read the piece. I learned aspects of Ms. Conran’s life that I had not known. Her father had been an abusive alcoholic. She had been all but penniless and homeless, with two children, after being fired by her husband, Terrence Conran in 1962. I learned that she did extensive research on human sexuality when writing Lace. After her success, she devoted time and money to helping educate girls and women. Financial literacy and math skills were needed for independence, she believed. She had been made a “Dame,” the equivalent of a knight, by the British monarchy and was, one time, among the wealthiest women in Britain. And, of course, I thought about the manuscript. My partner and I dug it out of the depths of a closet and looked it over. “You definitely don’t need to keep it any longer,” my partner said. “No, I don’t,” I said. I wrote to the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University Library and the Curator there suggested I contact the Bodleian Library at Oxford, since Ms. Conran was English. I heard back from the Bodleian, and I quote. “We would be grateful to receive this donation, thank you very much for the generous offer. It will fit in beautifully with our growing collections of blockbuster authors from the 1980s and 1990s, and it will be wonderful to have Shirley Conran take her proper place on that stage.” So, I’m packing up the manuscript, and the notebook and throwing in the postcard. It makes me happy to know that this piece of popular history will reside in one of the most prestigious libraries in the world. Lace will be there alongside Charles Dickens’ first editions and journals and magazines where Dickens works first appeared. Shirley Conran, Shirley my dear, or I should say Dame Shirley Conran, how could I ever have doubted you?