August 2013 – The Chapel Hill Rare Book Blog

In Memoriam: Seamus Heaney (April 13, 1939−August 30, 2013)

Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney passed away this morning in Dublin after an extended illness. The RBC and UNC mourn the loss of this great poet, who delivered the University commencement address at Chapel Hill on May 12, 1996.

While the man Heaney has left this world, his remarkable literary achievement lives on at the Rare Book Collection, where the Henry C. Pearson Collection of Seamus Heaney resides. North Carolina native Pearson (UNC B.A., 1935) sought to form as complete a collection of Heaney’s printed works as possible. This rich trove today includes more than 1,200 cataloged items, reflecting the poet’s extraordinary productivity.

There is much deep wisdom to be found in Heaney’s writings. But let us end with just one example, from his Chapel Hill address. Here, Heaney uses his memory of an altered fact in a childhood story—an imagined spade substituting for the real, humble, wooden spoon—to emphasize the necessity of personal truth in living a life.

Typescript of Heaney's commencement address — From the typescript of Heaney’s commencement address

“I want to avoid preaching at you but I do want to convince you that the true and durable path into and through experience involves being true to the actual givens of your own lives. True to your own solitude, your own secret knowledge. Because oddly enough, it is that intimate, deeply personal knowledge that links us most vitally to reality and keeps us most reliably connected to one another. Calling a spade a spade may be a bit reductive at times but calling a wooden spoon a wooden spoon is the beginning of wisdom, and you will be sure to keep going in life on a far steadier psychic keel and with far more radiant individuality if you navigate by that principle.”

It was a great honor for UNC to hear Seamus Heaney in person in 1996, as it is a great honor for Wilson Library to preserve his words in our special collections in perpetuity.

Julia Margaret Cameron in NYC and UNC

A small but choice exhibition of 35 photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) has recently opened at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to fine reviews.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Illustrations to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and Other Poems (London, 1875) — Julia Margaret Cameron, *Illustrations to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and Other Poems* (London, 1875) / Folio-2 PR5558 .A2 C3 1875 / William A. Whitaker Fund

Which reminds us that here at RBC, one of our most magnificent photographic books is the Cameron masterpiece Illustrations to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and Other Poems (London, 1875). The splendid volume contains a dozen large albumen prints, created by the British photographer.

The great Victorian poet Tennyson invited Cameron, his friend and neighbor on the Isle of Wight, to illustrate his poems on the Arthurian legends for a popular edition. After considerable work, costuming and staging models, she produced twelve images. However, the “Cabinet” edition used only two, reproduced as small wood-engraved frontispieces.

At Tennyson’s prompting, Cameron set to work on a deluxe edition that would juxtapose the full-size albumen prints with text excerpts, handwritten by her and reproduced lithographically, along with Tennyson’s signature at the end of each. The result was the book Illustrations to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and Other Poems.

In the decade preceding it, photography had been championed as a creative medium to rival painting by the likes of Henry Peach Robinson. In the magical image shown above, Cameron demonstrates photography’s representational and artistic power, posing her husband as Merlin—his natural beard lengthened by an extension—and one Agnes Mangles as Vivien, to recreate a scene from Tennyson’s text.

It is assumed that Cameron’s work pleased Tennyson, who had been dissatisfied with other illustrations of his poetry. His brother Charles Tennyson Turner wrote a sonnet “To Mrs. Cameron,” which appears at the beginning of the book. Its first lines extoll the contemporary medium’s storytelling strength:

Lo! Modern Beauty lends her lips and eyes

To tell an Ancient Story! Thou has brought

Into thy picture, all our fancy sought

In that old time, with skilful art and wise.

Wordsworth Bibliography in Print

Mauchline fern ware binding on The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth (Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo ..., [between 1863 and 1873?] ) / Wordsworth PR5850 .E63 1863d c. 21 — Mauchline fern ware binding on The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth (Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo …, [between 1863 and 1873?] ) / Wordsworth PR5850 .E63 1863d c. 21

At the end of 2010, Professor Emeritus Mark L. Reed, III, made a bountiful gift to the UNC Rare Book Collection, his extensive William Wordsworth collection. An exceptional scholar and collector, Professor Reed amassed a remarkable group of Wordsworth printings, dating from the end of the eighteenth century through the early twentieth century and including volumes with notable provenance, as well as examples from large stereotype editions in variant bindings. For a full discussion of the gift, see “Worthy of Wordsworth” in Windows, vol. 20, no. 1 (Spring 2011), pages 10-11.

This in-depth collecting became the basis for a project to record the editions and special physical attributes of Wordsworth publications. And so, Professor Reed also examined numerous other copies at institutions in the U.S. and abroad. His concentrated research and collecting has culminated in the recent two-volume work, A Bibliography of William Wordsworth 1787-1930, published by Cambridge University Press in Spring 2013.

The Technical Services staff of Wilson Special Collections Library are making good use of Professor Reed’s masterful bibliography as they catalog the over one thousand titles of his magnificent gift. Records are appearing daily in the University Library’s online catalog, enabling access to the volumes in Wilson Library’s second floor North Carolina Collection / Rare Book Collection Reading Room. The RBC is grateful to Eileen Dewitya, Sandi Honnold, and Page Life, emerita cataloger, for their single-minded perseverance in providing the proper cataloging.

We expect the RBC Wordsworth Collection to be a rich resource for present and future generations of Romantic literature scholars, as well as for all those interested in the history of the book in the nineteenth century. And so our loudest lauds and appreciation go to Professor Reed for his scholarly dedication, collecting talent and tenacity, and overwhelming generosity to UNC-Chapel Hill. Thank you Professor Reed!