Columbia Library columns (v.42(1992Nov-1993May))

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  v.42,no.1(1992:Nov): Page 4  



4                                        Dallas Pratt

relieved and tremendously excited. Ken related this story to me at
the beginning of my interview with him last summer.

"Acquiring this magnificent research resource for Columbia was
one of the greatest thrills of my career as a librarian," said Ken. One
of the treasures, a Eugene O'Neill manuscript of the introductions
to his collected plays, is described under item 72. (Subsequent items
mentioned in this introduction will be identified by the item num¬
ber in parentheses.) "What were some of the other 'thrills' in your
quarter century as Columbia's Librarian for Rare Books and Manu¬
scripts?" I asked, half-apologizing for associating thrills with the
activities of Ken, a distinguished librarian, author of five full-length
bibliographies, published poet, and formidable expert on manu¬
script and printed texts and on the book arts. "Oh, but there were
lots of those in my career," he said. "Imagine being summoned to
Tallahassee by Governor Reuben Askew of Florida to receive, at an
open session of the state legislature, the contents of Cora Crane's
safe deposit box which hadn't been opened since early in the cen¬
tury, and finding in it a wealth of documents relating both to Cora's
and Stephen Crane's family, the pen with which Stephen wrote sev¬
eral of his novels, and Cora's riding-crop!"

With much pleasure and satisfaction Ken also recalled a more
recent lunch at the Players' Club on Gramercy Park with Robert
Giroux of Farrar, Straus & Giroux; as lunch was drawing to a close,
his host said, "By the way, there's a shopping bag for you in the
cloakroom as you leave," and in it Ken found the hefty manuscript,
some six inches thick, of Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Moun¬
tain (89) which Bob Giroux was presenting as a gift to the Merton
Collection. The mention of Merton's name led me to ask, "I recall
an outstanding Merton exhibition which you mounted in the
Library in 1989. Was that mosdy Columbia-owned?" "Oh, yes, we
have a deeply felt commitment to Columbia authors, and of course
Merton was among our most distinguished alumni. We were told
by the Catholic chaplain at the University of the large collection of
Merton manuscripts stored in the basement of the Notre Dame
Church just a block from Butler Library. Since Father Merton had
  v.42,no.1(1992:Nov): Page 4