Day-Lewis Gives Parents\' Papers to Oxford

Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Time Daniel Day-Lewis.

Sometimes history gives to Daniel Day-Lewis, and sometimes he gives back. In this case, Mr. Day-Lewis, who plays the 16th President of the United States in the coming Steven Spielberg film “Lincoln,” is on the giving end and is donating the papers of his parents to the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University.

Mr. Day-Lewis, a two-time Academy Award-winner (for “My Left Foot” and “There Will Be Blood”), comes from estimable stock: his father, the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, was an Oxford University alumnus who was elected its professor of poetry in 1951 and named the poet laureate of the United Kingdom in 1968; his mother, the actress Jill Balcon, was a star of film, television, radio and theater.

Among the papers that Mr. Day-Lewis and his sister, Tamasin Day-Lewis, are donating to Oxford include correspondence between their parents and notable figures like W. H. Auden, Kingsley Amis, Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud, Robert Graves, Alec Guinness and Christopher Isherwood.

The Bodleian Libraries said it will host a special one-day event on Tuesday to celebrate the gift of the papers, at which Tamasin Day-Lewis will discuss her father's work and recordings of Jill Balcon's readings of Cecil Day-Lewis's poetry will be played. The documents that will be displayed during the event include a portion of “The Newborn,” a poem written by Cecil Day-Lewis to honor his son's birth.

In a statement, Tamasin and Daniel Day-Lewis said: “We are thrilled that our father's manuscripts are going to be housed at the Bodleian and certain that he would have been honored and pleased that they had been accepted. Oxford playe d an important part in our father's life. If the manuscripts had ended up outside the country it would have saddened us all as a family as the poets who became papa's lifelong friends and peers all met up at Oxford as undergraduates.”