Special Collections Report

412 SPECIAL COLLECTIONS REPORT By Dr. Frederick Korn, Curator (Florida State University Library) The John M. Shaw Collection, of Florida State University , Tallahassee, offers within one comfortably-negotiated room more than 26,000 volumes and manuscripts devoted to English and American poetry. The bulk of this material consists of first editions, significant editions, personal recollections, manuscripts, and commentaries by the poets themselves. Originally the personal library Mackay Shaw, the Collection was at f Childhood in Poetry. But the additi poets as FitzGerald, Swinburne, Grave a more comprehensive mission for the emphasis on the period in which flouri As might be expected with such a mi Period is especially well represented, a comprehensive review of major and era. A survey of first editions, a manuscripts would disclose almost all previous Special Collections Reports, following : of the late Dr. John irst under the rubric on of holdings in such s, and Aiken has led to Collection, with an shed children's poetry, ssion, the Transition The Collection offers minor poetry of this ssociation copies, and the poets mentioned in The list includes the William H. Davies Ezra Pound W. B. Yeats Robert Bridges Austin Dobson Algernon Swinburne R. L. Stevenson Edmund Blunden David Masson Herbert Asquith Rupert Brooke Edward Dowden Standish O'Grady J. A. Symonds Michael Field Oscar Wilde Thomas Hardy David Garnett R. C. Trevelyan G. M. Hopkins Isaac Rosenberg, Dorothy Gurney John Masefield Arthur Symons Ernest Radford Lionel Johnson Francis Thompson Andrew Lang Justin McCarthy Grant Allen Max Beerbohm Alfred Ainger Aubrey Beardsley Leonard Brooke John Nettleship Alfred Douglas William Watson John Todhunter Jane Wilde Cynthia Asquith Gerald Brenan Hugh Walpole E. V. Lucas W. S. Gilbert W. J. Dawson Violet Hunt Laurence Binyon William E. Henley Walter Crane Aubrey de Veré Herbert Home James Payn Hilaire Belloc Wilfrid Blunt James Barrie Stopford Brooke John Gray Henry Pennell Mathilde Blind Selwyn Image H. W. Garrod Geoffrey Keynes E. B. Jones Edward Bradley Ernest Rhys George Meredith Coventry Patmore Gordon Bottomley Claude Abbott 413 T. J. Wise Edmund Gosse Edith Sitwell Robert Frost John Drinkwater A. E.Housman J. C. Squire Wilfrid Meynell Eleanor Farjeon Ralph Hodgson Hilda Doolittle Alice Meynell Stephen Herbert Gatty Henry Woodd Nevinson John Langdon Heaton William Bell Scott Richard Le Gallienne William Holman Hunt D. H. Lawrence William Michael Rossetti John Oliver Hobbes Victoria Sackville-West W. T. Watts-Dutton E. H. Meyerstein Walter de la Mare Ford Madox Ford Alfred and Margaret Scott Gatty William Edward Hartpole Lecky Many others could be noted. Other useful offerings of the Collection include large holdings in book illustrators of the period, notes—dating from 1928 to the present—on book prices and valuable offerings in the dealers' catalogues, and a detailed, well-indexed catalogue of the Collection. Of the 1880-1920 period, the major poets who also wrote for children are especially well represented by first editions , association copies, dealers' catalogues, exhibition catalogues, and manuscripts. Of Kipling's poetry, the Collection holds thirty-three first editions (including the first American). Other useful items include notes in Kipling 's hand regarding poetry sources, in our copy of the first American edition of Departmental Ditties, and two association copies of considerable interest to Kiplingiana: Kipling, in his autobiography, refers to two books of children 's verse that "stirred" him as a child, one with "lovely tales," the other with a picture of "nine white wolves." The Collection holds both titles—Poems Written for a^ Child and Child-Nature; the former is an interesting association copy, "Agnes Beatrice Jane Argles from C. L. Dodgson. 1868." Holdings in the Housman circle indicate the ability of the Collection to trace the networks of rapport that characterize English literature and its makers. Of A. E. Housman, the Collection holds four first editions of poetry including a Shropshire with an original drawing of the author done by his brother Laurence, and a boxed set (Shropshire and Last Poems) signed and with a note by the author describing his attitude towards the inscribing of books. Laurence Housman is represented by eight first editions, and Laurence and Alfred's sister Clémence are represented by a first-edition Were-Wolf. The Collection also holds recollections of...