Previous exhibits

In 1979, with the support of the Woodruff gift, the cornerstone of the modern literature edifice in the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL)—the W.B. Yeats collection—arrived at Emory from the library of his friend and patron, Lady Augusta Gregory. As a young nationalist poet, Yeats had himself proposed the creation of a “Library of Ireland,” which would distribute books by the best contemporary writers to Irish towns without libraries. The scheme included the revival of the oral tradition, by training reciters and players to go into the countryside and take serious literature to those who could not read but who would listen eagerly to the living voice. His aim was to create a “spiritual democracy” in which all members of the nation were able to share in its literature—poetry, plays, stories, myths, and legends—for he believed that universal accessibility to imaginative culture was essential to building a great nation and political democracy. Thus, from the time that MARBL received the Yeats collection and began to build a major literary archive, a page was taken from his library scheme: its treasures would never be the exclusive preserve of elite scholars and postgraduates; they were to be materials for teaching as much as for research, for imaginative inspiration as much as for monographs. For the past thirty-three years undergraduate classes have been welcomed early to the feast of seeing and handling original manuscripts, notebooks, letters, and other documents of the creative process—and afterwards individual students have been welcome to use the archives for class papers, honors theses, conference presentations, and self-curated course exhibitions. Their ability to share in the imaginative culture of MARBL has led to scores of major fellowships, awards, and internships; it has been essential to building a destination university in the humanities. 

The present exhibition, WRITERS, is perhaps the finest manifestation to date of the spiritual democracy that MARBL has created for students and citizens of literature in the state, nation, and world. Its selectors include high school Advanced Placement Literature students; Emory undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and administrators; library staff; and the organizer of the Decatur Book Festival. They have pulled works by American, African American, English, Irish, Caribbean, and Indian authors; they have drawn upon the Edelstein collection of American poetry, the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, the Camille Billops and James V. Hatch archives, the Michel Fabre archives of African American arts and letters, and the single-author collections of Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Salman Rushdie, and Robert Penn Warren, among others; they have chosen a fascinating cross-section of archival items that have struck their individual imaginations, including manuscripts, typescripts, children’s books, inscribed books and pamphlets, broadsides, posters, fliers, letters, lectures and addresses, photographs, and audio recordings—all part of the primary and secondary matter, the ephemera and the detritus, of distinguished creative lives, preserved in the MARBL domain for communal delight, awe, and use. Welcome to a unique exhibition chosen by all-age lovers of writers and their writings.

 

– RONALD SCHUCHARD

Goodrich C. White Professor of English

PAST MEETS PRESENT

 

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE EMORY UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES COLLECTION

 

Curated by Kate Stratton, John Bence, and Kate Donovan Jarvis

 

The distinctive collections in the Emory University Archives preserve the history and intellectual heritage of Emory University, its students, faculty, and staff. Part of the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, the Emory University Archives is the repository for the official records of Emory University, as well as photographs, books, personal papers, audio and video recordings, artifacts, and memorabilia that document the rich history of Emory’s administrative offices, academic departments, and campus organizations, as well as the activities of its faculty, students, and staff. Selected for their enduring historical and administrative value, the ever-evolving collections offer a unique perspective on change and continuity in research, scholarship, administration, teaching, and student life at Emory over 175 years.

The Emory University Archives furthers the University’s teaching and research mission by providing access to its collections for students, faculty, administrators, and scholars at large. The diverse collections feature a vast range of materials including records of the Emory College and Emory University Boards of Trustees, student publications, departmental administrative materials, images of student and Greek Life, papers of past Emory presidents and key administrators, course catalogs, architectural plans, postcards, commencement programs, early Emory text and library books, faculty teaching materials and personal papers, scrapbooks and photo albums, diplomas, yearbooks, photographs of Emory’s Atlanta and Oxford campuses, and much more. By actively collecting books, papers, photographs, artifacts, and ephemera that document the growing University, the Emory University Archives is able to preserve and promote knowledge of Emory’s history, while at the same time providing researchers with a lens to critically examine, investigate, and understand Emory’s past, present, and future.

Founded by Caresse and Harry Crosby in Paris in the 1920s, the Black Sun Press exemplifies the ambitions and adventurousness of the Lost Generation that came of age after World War I. This exhibition gathers books published by the Crosbys – many in editions as small as seven – alongside the books owned, used, and loved by Harry and Caresse. Books by other members of the Jazz Age add to a rich portrait of an entire cohort of writers, readers, artists, and exiles. 

 

Caresse declared later that her motto for the postwar years was to answer “Always Yes.” The Crosbys were the center of an artistic scene in Paris and at their country home known as Le Moulin du Soleil, a former mill outside the city of light that was the site for wild parties and at least some writing. With a favorable exchange rate and a tradition of experimentation both on the page and in forms of living – and without the Prohibition in all senses found in the States – Paris proved a fertile ground for the arts during the Jazz Age.

 

Under the couple’s watch, the Black Sun Press evolved into a real force in both preserving and promoting an international modernism of exile and exuberance, high seriousness and playful surrealism. The concern began in 1925 as Editions Narcisse, printing poems and sonnets written by the Crosbys for each other: to call it simply a “vanity press” misses the high quality of the productions from the start (though perhaps might get at their vanity); to call it a labor of love understates the quality of their devotion to each other and the endeavor. Editions Narcisse also printed editions of a few friends and several of Harry Crosby’s inspirations, including Edgar Allen Poe.

 

Reincarnated as the Black Sun Press, the house went on to publish many of the key figures of modernism, often championing authors that others refused to print – from D.H. Lawrence to James Joyce. Perhaps Black Sun’s most famous book remains the first edition of Hart Crane’s long poem, The Bridge, which included the first photographs by Walker Evans to appear in book form. The Black Sun Press roster is a testament not only to the Crosbys’ good taste, but their bravery in the face of censorship and worse, achieving a rare mix of high-quality writing and sophisticated, luxe printing. 

 

After his early, tragic death just weeks after the Wall Street crash that began the Depression, Harry Crosby came to symbolize the Lost Generation as a kind of fatal modernism, helping define the cultural change felt in the arts and in the expatriate lives, often cut short, that tried to steady themselves in the wake of world war. Caresse Crosby carried on the good work of the press for several years, and after having invented the modern brassiere as a teenager, went on to help invent a cosmopolitan counterculture, one based on world citizenship, women’s activism, and international peace.

 

Shadows of the Sun illuminates the legacy of a press, the couple who founded it, and their friends and lovers – all of whom shaped the arts of their time and ours. 

 

— Kevin Young

Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing