ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

Acquisitions

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Libraryof Yale University has acquired the papers of the poet, translator, and teacher Robert Fitzgerald (1910-1985). Fitzgerald’s English version of the Odyssey, first published in 1961, and his subsequent translations of the Iliad (1975) and the Aeneid (1983) are widely recognized as outstanding examples of the art of translation. In 1976 he received the first Bollingen Award for translation. The papers include a selection of his manuscripts and his extensive correspondence, spanning five decades, with American poets and other prominent literary figures.

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Libraryhas received the papers (1650- 1989) of the Carter family of Shirley Plantation on the James River in Charles City County, Virginia. The collection of 18,000 items includes plantation journals, accounts, receipts, and personal papers of antebellum planter Hill Carter (1796-1875) and his family.

Papers of Robert R. Carter (1825-1886) consist of journals and letters written during voyages to Japan, the Arctic, and South America in the 1850s as well as his journals relating to the operation of the plantation after the Civil War. Correspondents include George Washington, Bishop James Madison, Robert E. Lee, Mary Custis Lee, George McClellan, Benjamin Butler, Frederic E. Church, Theodore Roosevelt, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. Also included in the collection are over 1,000 books from the Shirley library dated between 1540- 1900.

The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centerat the University of Texas at Austin has acquired the archive of novelist and critic Elizabeth Hardwick as well as correspondence and materials belonging to the poet Robert Lowell. The Hardwick papers are a gift from her own archive and include her semi-autobiographical novel Sleepless Nights published in 1979, correspondence about the novel and revised pages from the typescript, and correspondence between novelist Mary McCarthy (to whom the book was dedicated) and Hardwick’s ex husband, Robert Lowell, that are rich in gossip of the day and about literary and political matters.

The Lilly Library at Indiana University hasacquired the papers of playwright Clifford Odets, including scripts for plays, radio shows, films, and television productions along with his received correspondence. Odets (1906-1963) is known primarily as a proletarian playwright of the 1930s. His reputation was established by his early successes, Waiting for Lefty and Awake and Sing, both produced in 1935. Their popularity led to offers from Hollywood and the rest of Odets’s writing career was divided between the East and West coasts, writing filmscripts for Hollywood and plays for the New York stage.

His correspondence includes letters from such diverse public figures as Stephen Vincent Benet, Leonard Bernstein, Pearl Buck, Bennett Cerf, Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, Malcolm Cowley, Theodore Dreiser, Edna Ferber, Ira Gershwin, Alfred Hitchcock, Elia Kazan, Alfred A. Knopf, Archibald MacLeish, John O’Hara, Lawrence Olivier, Dorothy Parker, Kenneth Patchen, Jean and Dido Renoir, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Carl Sandburg, Upton Sinclair, Tennessee Williams, and Walter Winchell.

Syracuse University has received 128volumes of fore-edge painted books making it one of the largest public collections of such books in the world. The oldest volume in the collection donated by alumni David L. Poushter and Phyllis Freeman Poushter, is a 1728 edition of De Stmctura Orationis, a book of literary composition and rhetoric by the ancient Greek author Dionysis. The edition marks the first publication of the work in England.

Fore-edge painting is an art form dating back to mid-17th century England. It became popular in England in the early 1800s, and then began to die out at the beginning of the 20th century. A fore-edge painted book lying closed on a table looks no different from any other book, with the exception of the gold leaf sometimes found on the pages’ outer edges. The painting is revealed by gripping the book and bending back, or fanning, its pages. A hidden image appears on the book’s fore edge—the unbound edge opposite the spine. Typically, the image is a painting of a landscape or building. The work was done on individual copies at the behest of the book’s owner.

Kent State University is the recipient ofsome 2,000 autographs collected from statesmen, artists, athletes, and entertainers by Helen Kovach Gildzen of Elyria, Ohio, who spent many years pursuing this hobby. The collection includes autographs from gorilla expert Dian Fossey, Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite, Indian prime minister Rajiv Ghandi, pianist Librarace, feminist Germaine Greer, artist Andy Warhol, and filmmaker Spike Lee.

The University of California, Santa CruzLibrary has received a collection of more than fifty 16th-century books from university professor Hayden White. White collected most of the books from Roman book stalls while a graduate student in Italy in the 1950s. The collection includes a rare 1535 edition of Witelo’s Optics, the first European treatise on the subject, as well as a number of rare Aldines.

The University of Manitoba Libraries hasreceived a collection of 1,200 items relating to issues of aboriginal justice. The collection includes government reports, studies, and unpublished papers and covers a wide range of topics including: prison, myth and legend, land claims, police, aboriginal courts, and self-government. It also includes transcripts of public hearings in approximately 30 Manitoba communities.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln,received a collection of nearly 90 rare books and related items written by Willa Cather from Cather admirer J. Robert Sullivan. The collection contains limited and signed first editions of Cather’s novels and poetry, magazine articles written by Cather, a signed personal letter, and photographs. Sullivan also donated an 1807 account of the voyages of Lewis and Clark. ■