Robert DeMott Papers Relating to Poet John Haines

John Haines is the author of numerous books of poetry, including At the End of This Summer, The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer; Cicada, Leaves and Ashes, and News from the Glacier. His prose works include: Fables and Distances: New and Selected Essays and The Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-five Years in the Northern Wilderness. He has been the recipient of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Western States Book Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Congress.

Robert DeMott is the author and editor of books including Artful Thunder: Versions of the Romantic Tradition in American Literature, After The Grapes of Wrath: Essays on John Steinbeck, Steinbeck’s Reading: a Catalogue of Books Owned and Borrowed, and Working Days: the Journals of the Grapes of Wrath, 1938-1941. His poetry publications include Weather in Athens and News of Loss.

The Robert J. DeMott Papers Relating to Poet John Haines include correspondence, writings, printed materials, and photographs. The correspondence consists chiefly of letters from Haines to DeMott, but there are letters between Haines and others, including copies of letters from William Carlos Williams, Hayden Carruth, and President Bill Clinton. Letters from Haines to DeMott discuss the poet’s writing, efforts to find teaching positions, life in Alaska, and other topics, and they contain numerous enclosures, copies of drafts and printed versions of work, third party correspondence, photographs, and newspaper clippings on such topics as fishing and hunting. Writings by Haines include drafts and printed versions of articles and essays, open letters, poems, book reviews, speeches, and other writings. (MF)

A complete record of the collection can be seen on line:
Robert J. DeMott papers relating to John Meade Haines, 1953-2005.

New Exhibition: Rudyard Kipling: The Books I Leave Behind

The Appeal

If I have given you delight
By aught that I have done,
Let me lie quiet in that night
Which shall be yours anon:
And for that little, little span
The dead are borne in mind
Seek not to question other than
The books I leave behind.

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is pleased to announce a new exhibition: Rudyard Kipling: The Books I Leave Behind. The Books I Leave Behind will be on display at the library from June 1 to September 15^th. Please visit the library’s home page for hours and directions.

For the last decade of the nineteenth century and at least the first two decades of the twentieth, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was one of the most popular writers in the English language, in both prose and verse. Remembered today primarily as a fiction writer, Kipling was among the last British poets to command a mass audience, appealing to readers of all social classes and ages. Although his few novels, except Kim, were only a mixed success, in the medium of the short story Kipling extended the range of English fiction in both subject matter and technique and perhaps did more than any other author in the English language to blur the division between popular and high art.

Special attention in this exhibition is given to the bibliographic intricacies of Kipling’s printed output. His popularity meant that many editions of his work were issued—with revised texts, variant bindings, in special formats, and especially as unauthorized or “pirate” versions. The books and manuscripts shown here, gathered over the years by keen and discerning collectors, provide a picture of how Kipling’s stories and images traveled around the world in an amazing range of formats.

The exhibition is curated by David Alan Richards (Yale College Class of 1967, Yale Law School Class of 1972), and the majority of items on display are from the Kipling Collection he created and donated to the Beinecke Library. The exhibition also draws from the Kipling collections of Chauncey Depew and Matilda Tyler. A catalog documenting the exhibition will be available from Yale University Press. (TY)

“The Appeal,” by Rudyard Kipling, published posthumously, 1939.

Image: Rudyard Kipling, drawing by Sir William Nicholson, 1899.