Collections : [West Virginia and Regional History Center]

Photocopy of manuscript of Seamus Heaney's "Sweeney Astray".

Autograph manuscript with signature at the end of a poem entitled "Logan Grazier". English was an opponent of Edgar Allen Poe and wrote in a style imitative of his immediate literary predecessors. This poem is his celebration of the simple, hardworking herdsmen of Logan County. The author hopes that he, the poem and its subject will be long remembered. Also there is a TLS from the author Davis Grubb (dated: 11 September 1954) requesting that he be excused from meeting a deadline on A Dream of Kings. Talks about how writers have a habit of avoiding what they should be doing.

Correspondence of Tom Kromer, a Huntington, West Virginia, native, and his sister Emogene relating to Tom's "depression novel" WAITING FOR NOTHING, published in 1935. Also included are copies of three published reviews of the book, a chronology of Tom's life, and a photograph of Tom which was published in the first edition of the book.

Published and unpublished manuscripts, correspondence, and speeches of Virgil A. Lewis (1848-1912), the first state historian and archivist and a former state superintendent of schools. Subjects include the exploration, Indian wars, and settlement of Western Virginia; the Tory insurrection in the Valley of Lost River, 1781; the West Virginia new state movement; Masonry in West Virginia; Andrew S. Rowan; and various West Virginia authors. Correspondents include: George W. Atkinson, Waitman Barbe, Danske Dandridge, William M.O. Dawson, Granville D. Hall, Hu Maxwell, Mrs. Alexander McVeigh Miller, and Melville D. Post. See Scope and Content Note for contents list.

Papers of the managing editor of the Parkersburg DAILY STATE JOURNAL, 1889-1895, editor of the WEST VIRGINIA SCHOOL JOURNAL, and member of the English faculty of West Virginia University, 1895-1925. The collection includes manuscripts of Barbe's published poetry and unpublished short stories, correspondence, notes, speeches, class lectures, illustrations for short stories drawn by John Rettig, a scrapbook of clippings of reviews and correspondence relating to Barbe's book, GOING TO COLLEGE, and memorabilia. The correspondence includes letters, in some cases accompanied by holograph verse, from Winston Churchill, Richard Harding Davis, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Hamlin Garland, R.W. Gilder, Edward E. Hale, William H. Hayne, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Julia Ward Howe, William Dean Howells, Rupert Hughes, Stephen Leacock, Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, Brander Matthews, Margaret Prescott Montague, Bliss Perry, Melville D. Post, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Booth Tarkington, Charles Dudley Warner, Barrett Wendell, William Allen White, W.L. Wilson, and Owen Wister. There is also a volume of mounted holograph letters, 1884-1895, from the following American authors, a few of whom are also included in the general collection: Edward W. Bok, George W. Cable, Kate Chopin, Danske Dandridge, Oliver W. Holmes, Clifford Lanier, Sidney Lanier, Thomas Nelson Page, Margaret J. Preston, James Whitcomb Riley, and John G. Whittier. Most letters are brief and many are simple acknowledgements.