LITERATURE
In addition to its Victorian Collection, Special Collections has made an effort to develop collections of early 20th-century English literature, 19th-century American literature, and five major authors of those centuries. The Edwardian period in the literary history of Great Britain took up where the Victorian period left off. The Edwardian Collection at BYU, purchased from San Francisco book dealer David Magee in the early 1970s, comprises approximately 2,000 titles including all of the major and many of the minor authors of this period, such as Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, John Galsworthy, A. E. Houseman, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, John Masefield, Eden Phillpotts (350 titles), Siegfried Sassoon, Arthur Symons, P. G. Wodehouse (250 titles), Virginia Woolf, and William Butler Yeats.
American literature from the 19th and early 20th centuries is also well
represented in Special Collections. The American Literature Collection
mirrors the types of material found in the Victorian and Edwardian Collections.
Consisting of the writings of novelists, poets, dramatists, and illustrators,
this collection of several thousand volumes supports the teaching and
research of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty in all aspects
of literature, intellectual history, children’s literature, folklore,
and biography.
Besides purchasing materials that exemplify the high points of American
and English literature, Special Collections also acquires material by
and about five literary authors: the William Wordsworth Collection, the
Robert Burns Collection, the Herman Melville Collection, the Walt Whitman
Collection, and the Louisa May Alcott Collection.
Last Updated September 2002