MS Stacey (Robert) Papers Coll 00127H
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MS Stacey (Robert) Papers Coll 00127H Title: Robert Stacey Papers Dates: 1950-1991, 1966-1990 predominant Physical Description: 33 boxes, ca. 3.8 metres of textual records; 17 photographs; 7 negatives. Biographical Sketch: Robert Stacey was born on July 2nd, 1949 in Toronto, Ontario. He was the son of Harold Stacey, a silversmith, and Margaret Stacey, an elementary school teacher. He attended Northview Heights Secondary School where he was recognized by many of his teachers for his precocious writing talent and where he wrote his earliest essays, short stories, plays, and poems. Stacey went on to study at the University of Toronto where as an undergraduate he became involved with Dora Mavor Moore’s New Play Society and Douglass Chambers’ PAN Gallery. Stacey travelled to England in the early 1970’s, where he lived briefly in London working for the renowned art bookseller Anton Zwemmer. At about this time Stacey’s career as an art critic began to grow, cemented in part by his exhaustive researching of his maternal grandfather, the highly regarded Canadian painter C.W. Jefferys. This culminated in the exhibition “Charles William Jefferys, 1869-1951” (Agnes Etherington Art Centre,1976) and the later publication of the biography, C.W Jefferys (National Gallery of Canada, 1985). For the rest of his life Stacey was deeply involved in the world of Canadian Art, working as a freelance writer, editor, and curator. In 1991-1992 Stacey won the first Fellowship in Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada. He was writer-in-residence at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1997. And he was the founder of the imprint Archives of Canadian Art and Design. He contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues including: The Big Show! Andrew King's Show Prints, 1919-1958 (Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, 1987); The True North: Canadian Landscape Painting, 1896-1939 (Lund Humphries/Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1991); Visions of Light and Air: Canadian Impressionism, 1885-1925 (Americas Society, New York, 1995), Massanoga: The Art of Bon Echo (Archives of Canadian Art, 1998), and North by South: The Art of Peleg Franklin Brownell 1853-1946 (Ottawa Art Gallery, Archives of Canadian Art and Design, 1998). His published books include: Lives and Works of the Canadian Artists (editor, Dundurn Press, 1977), The Canadian Poster Book: 100 Years of the Poster in Canada (Methuen, 1979); and J.E.H. MacDonald, Designer: an Anthology of Graphic Design, Illustration and Lettering (Archives of Canadian Art, 1996. Stacey 1 MS Stacey (Robert) Papers Coll 00127H Robert Stacey died in 2008 and is survived by his partner of many years, Maggie Keith. Scope & Content: Collection consists of unpublished poetry, short fiction, draft essays and personal writing and some small amount of correspondence. Many of the items enclosed are also adorned with sketches, doodles and drafts of unrelated works. Stacey took inspiration from many sources: history, current events, phrases and idioms, and events in his own life. These materials arrived in nine boxes, packaged by Stacey before his death, from the National Gallery of Art, and form part of Stacey’s fonds, split with The National Gallery Archives. Where possible, original order has been maintained, the main exceptions being the removal to separate folders of items whose small or unusual shape might cause them to be lost or damaged if mixed in with full- size items, and the gathering of materials by genre in cases in which they were interspersed. Best effort was made to match page to page, but because Stacey often did not title, or even complete, every draft of his assorted poems and prose there is a strong likelihood that some of the writing (particularly the poetry) has been mismatched. Additionally, Stacey at times writes autobiographically using conventions of either poetry or fiction and though some effort has been made to distinguish the proper series an item belongs to, the hybrid and/or ambiguous nature of his writing at times also makes this exercise a question of best guesses. Materials are divided into six series: Series 1: Poetry Series 2: Collections Series 3: Short Fiction & Plays Series 4: Essays Series 5: Personal writing and miscellaneous items Series 6: Correspondence Series 1: Poetry Dates: 1965-1991 Physical Description: 24 boxes, ca. 3 metres of textual records. Scope & Content: Series consists of holograph, typescript and word processed poetry. Though he was well-regarded in his lifetime as a leading expert on Canadian art, Stacey also wrote extensive amounts of poetry for several decades. This was largely done in private; his efforts in this area were a little known fact, even among close friends. Frequent switching from type to handwriting, from pencil to pen of different coloured inks, continuation of a work on different sizes of paper, indicate that wrote most of his poems in multiple sittings, in multiple locations, using 2 MS Stacey (Robert) Papers Coll 00127H whatever materials were at hand when the feeling took him. As a medium, poetry appears to have served Stacey’s inclination to play with language, a preference for description over narrative, adjective and adverb over noun and verb. Despite producing a prodigious amount of it, Stacey never published any of his poetry, on the whole, appearing to have written it primarily for his own pleasure. However, as evidenced by several items of correspondence and personal writing, as well as Stacey’s frequent editing of his poems and organizing of this material into possible collections (see Series 2), he did have some thought to publishing. Titles for poems, in many instances, are taken from first lines. Several items are written under the pen names “George Roberts” and “G.H. Roberts.” Box 1: Contains poems and short fiction written between 1965 and 1975 beginning when 16 folders Stacey was a high school student at Northview Heights Collegiate in North York, Ontario and leading into his years of association with PAN gallery in the 1970’s. Folder 1 Ten Years Ago. Typescript. 1965 Typescript The Canyon. Typescript. 1966 Poems The Hate Song of J. Alfred Riffraff. Typescript. 1966 Sleep. Typescript. 1966 One for My Country. Typescript. 1966 Seen at a Crossing. Typescript. 1966 Riviere Aux Sables. Typescript with holograph revisions. 1966 Riviere Aux Sables. Typescript. [1966?] [later draft] Noon. Typescript. 1966 Frost. Typescript. 1966 Hands. Typescript. 1966 Folder 2 The Starkness of the Rocks Beneath the Winter Moon. Typescript. 1966 Typescript They Brought the Bad News. Typescript. 1966 Poems In the Walled Garden. Typescript. 1966 La Verendrye. Typescript. 1966 A Hot Wind Coursing. Typescript. 1966 A Blind Poet’s Words on Death. Typescript. 1966 Gens, Gentis. Typescript. 1966 Fantasy. Typescript. 1966 The Running Man. Typescript. 1966 Song of the Coming Age. Typescript. 1966 Folder 3 Silence. Typescript. [1966?] Typescript Deep Autumn. Typescript. 1966 Poems Cross out Thy Hearts. Typescript. 1966 The Story of My Life. Typescript. 1966 A Demolition. Typescript. 1966 Sleep. Typescript. 1966 [different than “Sleep” in folder 2] Cry Falcon. Typescript. 1966 Parnassus and All That. Typescript. [1966?] Memories of Man. Typescript. 1966 3 MS Stacey (Robert) Papers Coll 00127H Lights. Typescript. [1966?] Childhood. Typescript. [1966?] A Passing Face. Typescript. 1966 The Writer’s Hen. Typescript. 1966 Folder 4 Alpinist’s Demise. Typescript. [1967?] [single-spaced] Typescript Alpinist’s Demise. Typescript. 1967 [double-spaced] Poems Choisisme. Typescript. 1967 Unpredudiced Man [sic]. Typescript. 1967 On Their Blindness. Typescript. 1967 Requiescat. Typescript. 1967 Assassin. Typescript. 1967 The Bullring. Typescript. [1967] There are no Kings, no Royalty, no Crown. Typescript. 1967 Obligatory. Typescript. 1967 Folder 5 Ad Cynicus. Typescript. 1967 Typescript In the Old Days the Penthouse was Where They Stored the Elevator Machinery. Poems Typescript. 1967 Noxious. Typescript. 1967 Birch Irony. Typescript. 1967 Performance. Typescript. 1967 Trahison. Typescript. 1967 Ivy Gripped the Cross. Typescript. 1967 Man with Handkerchiefs. Typescript with holograph revisions. 1967 Sleep Again. Typescript. 1967 Seventeen Shadows on Pavement. Typescript. 1967 Mad Poet. Typescript. 1967 Folder 6 There are More Things, Horatio… Typescript. 1967 Typescript Sires. Typescript. 1967 Poems Lapidary. Typescript. 1967 Unmarried Maid. Typescript. 1967 The Skeletons of Spring. Typescript. 1967 Recurrence in Time’s Currents. Typescript. 1967 Lo. Typescript. 1967 Circlets, Clockface Spheres, and Time. Typescript. 1967 Matchmaker. Typescript. 1967 Left Turn Lane. Typescript. 1967 Folder 7 “No Dumping”. Typescript. 1967 Typescript Wine Standing. Typescript. 1967 Poems The House and the Brain. Typescript. 1967 Rilke’s Thoughts on, Poisoned, Sacrificing Life. Typescript. 1967 Tomorrow I Die. Typescript. 1967 Charged Organism. Typescript. 1967 Drummed Contrast (Echoed Clang). Typescript. 1967 Antiquated Equinox. Typescript. 1967 Alone. Typescript. 1967 Hallucinations Perceived in the Process of Starving. Typescript. 1967 4 MS Stacey (Robert) Papers Coll 00127H Folder 8 A Premature Divulgence of Life’s Secrets Cased in Coffered in Old Windsculpted Typescript Drifts of Cold White Snow. Typescript. 1967 Poems Red Fish in Stark Meadows. Typescript. 1967 Left to Die. Typescript. 1967 Albino Hush. Typescript. [1967?] So, Years. Typescript. 1967 Professor. Typescript. 1967 Translucence. Typescript. 1967 Aspirations. Typescript. 1967 You. Typescript. 1967 Folder 9 Lit Window’s Surplus Nighttime Curse. Typescript.