Fascinating inscribed books, open letters, manuscripts, and correspondences related to great literary friendships.
Open letter from Mark Twain to Walt Whitman on the poet’s 70th birthdayIn letter, written from Hartford on May 24,1889, Twain declares to Whitman, “You have lived just the seventy years which are greatest in the world’s history and richest in benefit and advancement to its peoples. These seventy years have done much more to widen the interval between man and the other animals than was accomplished by any five centuries which preceeded them.” Call Number: YCAL MSS 202.2.80
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature; Addresses, and Lectures
The book includes the author’s presentation inscription to Henry David Thoreau [dated] 7 Sept. 1849. Book published in Boston: J. Munroe, 1849. Call Number: Za Em34 849n Copy 2
Correspondence between Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten.
Call Numbers: JWJ MSS 26 and ZA Van Vechten
Correspondence from Marianne Moore to H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)
Call number: YCAL MSS 24
Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road, an Autobiography
A presentation copy to Carl Van Vechten from Zora Neale Hurston. Book published in Philadelphia: J.B. Lippencott Company, 1942. Call Number: JWJ Zan H946 942d
Correspondence between Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams
Call Numbers: YCAL MSS 43 and YCAL MSS 116
Manuscript by Glenway Wescot of “Concerning Miss Moore’s Observations” for the Dial Magazine
Call Number: YCAL MSS 34.26.678
Correspondence from Ralph Ellison to Richard Wright
Call Number: JWJ MSS 3
Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time
Book inscribed to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Published in Paris: Three Mountains Press, 1924. Call Number: Za H373 924 Copy 1
Image: Richard Avedon, photograph of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, from the Langston Hughes Papers. Call number: JWJ MSS 26
Beinecke Top Tens gather (approximately) ten related items to give an at-a-glance look at some of the Library’s interesting, important, strange, compelling, beautiful holdings. To see more lists, click here: Beinecke Top Tens. To suggest a list subject, contact us: Top Ten Ideas.