University at Buffalo Poetry and Rare Books Collection Earning International Recognition for Its Depth

Famous for James Joyce, Robert Graves and William Carlos Williams collections

Release Date: November 4, 2002 This content is archived.

Print

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- As he packed off to London the army knapsack used by renowned "wartime poet" Robert Graves, Robert Bertholf -- curator of the University at Buffalo Poetry and Rare Books Collection -- reflected on the value of the items he often sends to museums from around the world.

"For scholars, the knapsack symbolizes the profound effect of World War I on one of England's most important literary figures," says Bertholf. "But when I met Grave's son, William, he was delighted to learn we had the knapsack because it brought back memories of using it as a child to carry his towels to the beach."

The knapsack and a book of John Keats's poems -- containing poems scrawled by Graves on its back pages -- were sent last month to the Imperial War Museum in London, where they are part of the exhibition, "Anthem for Doomed Youth: Twelve Soldier Poets of the First World War."

It is one of four major exhibits in which the UB Poetry and Rare Books Collection -- famous for its Graves, James Joyce and William Carlos Williams collections -- is participating over the next few months, Bertholf says.

Last month, UB provided a collection of books by Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Jonathan Williams and Charles Olson to the National Museum Center of Art Reina Sofia in Madrid. In December, UB will provide the Circle of Beautiful Arts museum in Madrid with manuscripts for an exhibition on the life of Robert Graves, and Bertholf will give a speech at the exhibit's opening.

And in February, the UB collection will mount an exhibition -- totally from its holdings -- of idiosyncratic printer and papermaker Walter Hamady at New York City's Grolier Club, the largest and oldest society for bibliophiles in the United States.

With the activity, the UB collection -- valued at "so much money that it doesn't matter," says Bertholf -- is quietly achieving international notoriety for its significance.

"Over the last few years we've seen signs that people are recognizing the importance of our library," Bertholf says. "We are receiving many more requests from museums for our collections and many more requests worldwide from researchers seeking source materials for books and articles."

Most famous of all is UB's James Joyce collection, which is the world's most comprehensive. It contains original manuscripts of Joyce's novels, various notebooks complied by Joyce when writing "Finnegans Wake" and "Ulysses," first edition copies of every book published by Joyce, hundreds of letters to and from Joyce, and several of Joyce's personal items, such as family portraits and his personal library.

The 55 handwritten "Finnegans Wake" notebooks are the centerpiece of a massive critical investigation of Joyce's creative mind during the 16 years he spent writing the novel. Three of the notebooks -- featuring analysis from an international board of Joyce scholars -- were published in March to international acclaim. Two more were published in October and three more are slated for publication in the spring of 2003.

According to Bertholf, the notebooks Joyce used to write "Ulysses," and other items from UB's Joyce collection, will be exhibited by the National Library of Ireland in 2004 for the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, the annual international celebration of the date -- June 16 -- when the events described in "Ulysses" take place.

With the international attention has come added responsibility. A single page of Joyce's handwriting has an insurance value of $100,000, Bertholf notes. Requests from exhibition spaces that do not conform to strict security and insurance guidelines are flatly refused. As a safeguard, Bertholf sometimes personally delivers valuable items to their destinations; most times he uses an insured art carrier.

"On one occasion, I received a request from the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia, which wanted a foot-long dip pen that Joyce used to sign the limited edition of Ulysses," Bertholf recalls. "I would have made the trip from Buffalo to Philadelphia with the pen, but I didn't want to chance having it confiscated by airport security as a potential weapon."

Over the next few years, Bertholf anticipates that UB's Dylan Thomas collection will begin receiving its share of fame. Among its 100,000 volumes of poetry, the UB collection possesses all of the first-edition books by the legendarily boisterous Welsh poet. And it has nine of Thomas's notebooks, including the famous "red notebook," which contains the original manuscripts of poems Thomas wrote as a young man.

"Dylan Thomas is coming back into vogue," Bertholf says. "Tastes change, even among poetry and rare book scholars."

Media Contact Information

John Della Contrada
Vice President for University Communications
521 Capen Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260
Tel: 716-645-4094 (mobile: 716-361-3006)
dellacon@buffalo.edu
Twitter: @UBNewsSource