Columbia Library columns (v.2(1952Nov-1953May))

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  v.2,no.1(1952:Nov): Page 26  



2 6                            Roland Baughman

subjects. The collection numbers hundreds of thousands of items,
and nearly sixty standard manuscript boxes are required to house
it. Each item is carefully documented as to its place and date of
publication, and the material is arranged by countries. The pro¬
digious labor which Mr. Nomad has put into the compilation of
the collection wonderfully facilitates use by other scholars, and
renders further organizational work unnecessary.

1 homas S. Jones, a poet of deep religious insight, died about
twenty years ago in New York. His papers, books, and manu¬
scripts were left in the care of his friend, John L. Foley. Within
the past few weeks they were presented to the Columbia Uni¬
versity Libraries, and they will be available to qualified students
and scholars in the department of Special Collections.

A current commentary on Jones calls him "a poet of some
importance making a serious contribution to our religious litera¬
ture." Examination of the collection of his books and papers en¬
courages a more subjective analysis, suggesting that he was a
singularly well-loved personality with a wide circle of intimates,
including many of the principal literary figures of his day. He was
a generous and conscientious correspondent, judging by the
hundreds upon hundreds of letters from his friends and associates
which he neatly and carefully filed away in packets. From authors
both here and abroad he was the recipient of scores of affection¬
ately-inscribed slim little volumes of poetry, many of them col¬
lectors' items in their own right, and doubly so in their present
"association" forms.

One of Jones's principal preoccupations during his later years
was the release of the poetry of the subconscious directly through
"automatic writing," and his files contain a wide range of manu¬
scripts composed by that method. Automatic writing once was
used in efforts to communicate with the supernatural, and now is
the special tool of psychology in probing the latent recesses of the
mind. Serious students of this phase of enquiry will find in this
collection a varied, dependable, and fruitful area for exploration.
  v.2,no.1(1952:Nov): Page 26