The University of Manitoba acquired its first and most important literary manuscript collection in the early 1960s when the papers of the famed Canadian prairie writer Frederick Philip Grove were offered by his widow Catherine Wiens Grove (Mss 2, Finding Aid).
As fully documented in the D. O. Spettigue Research Collection (Mss 57, acquired in 1986 & 1995), "FPG" was born Felix Paul Greve, a minor German author & highly prolific translator who faked his own suicide in 1909 to start a new life in America. Before he appeared as Grove in Manitoba in 1912, he had abandoned his first wife Else near Sparta, Kentucky. She became well-known as Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (FrL) in New York dada circles surrounding Man Ray & Marcel Duchamp at the same time Grove emerged as a Canadian author from Rapid City, MB, in 1922.
Apart from the Spettigue Collection, Grove's papers are further supplemented by the Margaret Stobie (Mss 13) and the Divay (Mss12) research collections. An FPG (Greve/Grove) & FrL Endowment was established in 1996, and a website devoted to these collections has been in existence since then.

Since the 1960s, the Libraries have obtained the papers many more authors, poets, novelists, critics and journalists including Ralph Connor (i.e., C. W. Gordon), Dorothy Livesay, Eli Mandel, Henry Kreisel, Margaret Avison and John Newlove. Archives & Special Collections also houses the business records of the following prairie literary presses: Turnstone Press of Winnipeg, Thistledown Press of Saskatoon, and NeWest Press of Edmonton.

Considering the number and completeness of the collections pledged and available, the Department now ranks as a leading research centre for the study of western Canadian literature.