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The Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard University, 1931-1991

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The Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard University, 1931-1991 Among Harvard's Libraries: The Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard University, 1931-1991 The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Haviaras, Stratis. 1992. Among Harvard's Libraries: The Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard University, 1931-1991. Harvard Library Bulletin 3 (3), Fall 1992: 5-12. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42663109 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Among Harvard's Libraries 5 THE W ooDBERRY POETRY RooM AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 1931-1991 Stratis Haviaras eorge Edward Woodberry, in whose G honor the Poetry Room was named, was born in 1855 in Beverly, Massachusetts. He studied at Philips Exeter Academy and then at Harvard, where he became the protege of Professor Charles Eliot Norton and the poet James Russell Lowell. The young undergraduate, "whose health and purse were alike poor" and who had already lost a year in college, is said to have been hired by Lowell to catalog his personal library. Woodberry ac- knowledged Norton and Henry Adams as his most influential teachers. "[Adams] was my teacher at Harvard, and 'formed' my mind on its intellectual side, as Norton did on the aes- thetic," he wrote to Lewis Einstein in 1919. Figure1 . Graduationphoto ,f George In other letters Woodberry recalls writing Edward Woodberry.(Courtesy of Har- poems as early as age thirteen; he went on to vard UniversityArchives.) publish his first poems in The Atlantic Monthly, at that time edited by William Dean Howells, There he developed and headed the depart- and to serve as editor of The Harvard Advo- ment of comparative literature until, follow- cate. His class oration, "The Relation of Pallas ing a dispute with the administration, he Athene to Athens," was cancelled at the last resigned in 1904. While at Columbia he pub- minute because members of the faculty were lished two volumes of poetry, two collections STRATISHAVIARAS is Curator concerned that the most conservative part of of essays, editions of the works of Shelley and of the George Edward Wood- the audience might misinterpret it as "too pa- Poe, a literary history, and his biographies of berry Poetry Room and the gan." The oration was printed in 1928 in an Hawthorne and Emerson. In 1903 he edited Henry Wes ton Farnsworth edition of thirty copies by the Signet Society the first issue of the Journal of ComparativeLit- Room in the Harvard College (Figure 1). erature.Woodberry's classes at Columbia were Library. Woodberry graduated from Harvard in much sought after, and for several years he 1877 and that summer took his first trip to the was chosen as the most popular professor. Mediterranean. "What a blessing it was that I "He had the miraculous gift of making poetry was dipped in Castalia when I was young! I alive and attractive to large masses of fairly began Greek at my thirteenth year, I think, average boys," recalls one of his students; an- and the world began to brighten up right off, other, John Erskine, recalls that Woodberry though there was light before; and after that "constantly tried to open their minds and in- 'twas Greek all the way," he wrote to J. H. crease their sympathies for the world at large McDaniels. In September of the same year he and especially toward the new America, the accepted an appointment as professor of En- possible America which should be not New glish at the University of Nebraska. He con- England nor the South nor exclusively tinued to publish poems and articles in The Anglo-Saxon, but an amalgamation of ener- Atlantic Monthly and The Nation and for a gies and ideals." In 1905 a group ofhis former while served as the literary editor of The Bos- students founded the Woodberry Society in ton Post. His biography of Edgar Allan Poe Beverly. was published by Houghton Mifilin in 188 5 A living monument by now, Woodberry to considerable acclaim, and in 1891, on the returned to Beverly to devote his energy to recommendation of James Russell Lowell, he writing, editing, and reviewing, often taking joined the faculty of Columbia University. time to travel to southern Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, and North Africa. Harvard awarded This article incorporates material from earlier articles on the him an honorary degree in 1911. "As for my- Woodberry Poetry Room, written by John Lincoln Sweeney self, I had Henry James next to me, who and Jeanne Broburg. 6 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN occasions Woodberry discussed this with his long-time friend Harry Harkness Flagler of New York, and their talks and correspondence brought forth the vision of a comfortable, unlibrarylike room where students and faculty might find on tables and shelves the poetry of their own century, which at that time had not yet entered the college curriculum. Things began to change in 1925, though, when the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry was inaugurated, commemorating Woodberry's great teacher. Change gained momentum when in January 1929 Morris Gray ofBoston (also Class of 1877) offered the College Library a fund of$40,ooo for the pur- chase of books of current verse and for occa- sional talks or lectures on modem poetry. Figure 2. LAying the cornerstonefor Three months later, Woodberry was invited WidenerLibrary in 1913. (Courtesyof to give the first lecture under the auspices of Harvard UniversityArchives.) the Morris Gray Fund. This is how the poet- scholar himself describes that event in a letter received the same degree, and put his arm to Mrs. Irving S. Underhill: " 'Twas in over my shoulders most of the time. John T. April- I went up to Harvard, to the Library Morse was the other side; and we had a good and gave a talk to about forty undergraduates deal of talk all the time. The greatest surprise on poetry, who were 'invited' to hear me, on to me was when the orator, 'saluting' the au- the basis of a new poetry fund given by a class- dience, picked me out and made a little mate. It went off all right, apparently, and I personal welcome in Latin! I was quite unpre- wasn't the least tired by it-no after effects! pared for that-and it gave the Harvard Fac- Doesn't that deserve a Bravo! and a Viva! I had ulty an opportunity to applaud me," he wrote lunch with my old professor, Palmer; and they to Mrs. George Sawyer Kellogg. sent down an auto to take me up and bring me Two years later, at Commencement 1913, home, after which I smoked a quiet cigar, said Woodberry was the Phi Beta Kappa poet at 'Ben Fatto!' and slept. That was when I was the literary exercises: "And, getting to my seventy-three-what will the New Year poem by the end of the week, availed myself bring?" On January 2, 1930, George Edward of what grace the Muses had to spare for their Woodberry died in a Beverly hospital after a vagabond. I gave it at Sanders, the lowest part brief illness. well filled and the upper gallery partly. Previ- The vision shared by Woodberry and ously we had laid the cornerstone of the new Flagler was not long in materializing. On May library in the broiling sun - granite all about 26th, 1931, the Woodberry Poetry Room us, derricks, etc. It was picturesque-on one opened on the third floor ofWidener Library. tall pile of stone, the students in their gowns By all accounts, from 1931 to 1949 it was one and ribbons and on another the Italian work- of the warmest and most welcoming spots in men and boys, vivid contrast to the two cones Widener. It had open shelves, comfortable (?) of humanity, and in the midst of the main chairs, and good lighting. Along one wall group, Mrs. Widener with her trowel, other were some of the books from Amy Lowell's Wideners, the president, orator, etc., and personal library. In 1949, through a second myself in the front row. I thought to myself grant from Flagler, the Poetry Room was re- how much happier I should be and more fit located to more spacious and elegant quarters with the Italians! But comforted myself, mus- in the newly built Lamont Library and Amy ing that it was for their bambini that we were Lowell's books were transferred to Houghton laying the stone." (Figure 2) Library. Lowell's collection has been de- It had been Woodberry's constant regret scribed as a fascinating mixture ofliterary es- that so many undergraduates were passing sences and accidents, and its presence in the through Harvard without sufficiently realizing Poetry Room during the early years, together that poetry is primarily for pleasure. On several with the Morris Gray lectures and readings Among Harvard's Libraries 7 Figure 3. The Woodberry Poetry Room in 1932. (Courtesy of Haward UniversityArchives.) that took place there for invited audiences, Martha Dickinson Bianchi on "Emily helped to establish the character of this unique Dickinson" (1929-30); poetry library. (Figure 3) Theodore Morrison on "Poetry from the Another milestone in the growing interest Point ofView of the Magazine Editor as well in modern poetry at Harvard was the appoint- as that of a Writer" (1930-31); ment of T. S. Eliot to the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship for the academic year I. A. Richards on "An Ideal Poetry Room" 1932-33.
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