Poe is a perennial literary favorite at Halloween time, and Special Collections is a great place to come if you’re looking for your fill of his creepy tales and poems. The Rare Book Collection contains first printings of tales like “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-tale Heart” in our 19th century …
Special Collections’ exhibit “Voices of the Civil War” features Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, who both tried to grapple with the violence and suffering caused by the American Civil War through their poetry. On display are first-edition copies of Whitman’s Drum-taps and Melville’s Battle-Pieces and Aspects of War. The library collects all printed works by …
Here are a few of the new books which have recently arrived in Special Collections for the Robert Burns Collection and the Edward M. Rowe Collection of William Wordsworth: Sharon Alker, et al., eds. Robert Burns and Transatlantic Culture. Ashgate, 2012. Stephen Gill, Wordsworth’s Revisitings. Oxford University Press, 2011. Scott Hess, William Wordsworth and the …
Victorian author Edward Lear also had a 200th birthday this month, on May 12 (possibly May 13). Lear is best remembered today for his nonsense verse, including many limericks and “The Owl and the Pussycat.” Lear was an illustrator who published several books of zoological and landscape paintings before self-publishing his two-volume Book of Nonsense …
Monday, May 7 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of renowned Victorian poet Robert Browning. Special Collections owns a treasure trove of Browning items, including first and rare editions of his works, books once owned by Browning, and first and rare editions of works by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert’s wife and a famous poet …
Did you know that Special Collections’ Walt Whitman Collection contains around 80 separate editions of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, including most of the editions issued by the poet during his lifetime? Whitman was constantly revising and reorganizing Leaves of Grass, so a collection of the various editions he released provides scholars with a picture of …
The following books are a sampling of some of the recent works of criticism acquired for the Herman Melville Collection. To find these books and others, search the library catalog for the subject “Melville, Herman” or “Melville, Herman, 1819-1891–Criticism and interpretation.” David Dowling, Chasing the White Whale: The Moby-Dick Marathon; or, What Melville Means Today. …
Several new critical works on William Wordsworth, his contemporaries, and English Romanticism have been added to the Edward M. Rowe Collection of William Wordsworth. These include: Arthur H. Bell, “The child in Wordsworth’s major poetry: a master metaphor and its implications.” Lexingford Publishing, 2010. Jacqueline Labbe, “Writing romanticism: Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, 1784-1807.” Palgrave …
2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War. Special Collections has a variety of archival and rare book collections related to the war, including original letters and photographs, print histories, pamphlets, and other documents and print sources created during the Civil War (1861-1865). The Rare Literature Collections contain many examples …
Special Collections contains a small number of books by American poets from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Highlights include editions of Phillis Wheatley’s Poems, Joel Barlow’s Vision of Columbus, and early works by Lydia Huntley Sigourney. Special Collections also owns a copy of Samuel Kettell’s 1829 Specimens of American Poetry, an important early …