Rare Books and Manuscripts

Australian literature has been taught at Penn State since 1940, when Professor William S. Dye, then head of the Department of English Literature, acted on an idea that had been germinating for many years. Dye had become acquainted with the historical and literary backgrounds of the British Empire as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania. Working on the premise that where there is history there must be something of literary interest, he conceived the idea of a series of lectures on the literature of the British Commonwealth. Years passed, and the idea lay dormant. Professor Dye wrote later, "When the soldiers of the British Dominions entered the war in 1939 and there seemed to be only a matter of time when the United States would also become involved in the conflict, the old idea was taken out and dusted off again. My feeling was that a study of the work done in literature by the other English-speaking lands would lead to a better understanding of those would likely become our allies."

By 1940 Professor Dye was near retirement, and Professor Bruce Sutherland was given the opportunity to investigate the available material for the lecture series. A course (English 70) was outlined and submitted to the Course of Study Committee and ratified. Dye later wrote that he chose Australia because it "offered a field of writings that grew out of two conditions: 1) the pioneer character of the people and 2) the social and economic experimentation in a romantic, far-off place. The country was different, the flora and fauna were strange, and the people were an odd mixture of colonial immigrants. Much that was written at first was imitative of English writers, but gradually it became acclimated to new surroundings."

But necessary materials from Australia and New Zealand were sorely lacking. Professor Dye taught the course for one year before turning it over to Bruce Sutherland, who made a great effort to find out what Australians thought was their best literature, to select the titles to present to American undergraduates, and to oversee the acquisition of books and periodicals. After Sutherland's death in 1969, the late Charles Mann, professor of English and chief of Rare Books and Special Collections, continued to teach Australian literature and to acquire scarce and unusual books for the Libraries until his death in July of 1998. A course in Australian literature is taught now by Professor Mark Morrisson in the Department of English.

The Libraries' Australian collections have grown partly as a result of gifts from many friends in Australia. The creation of the Thomas and Henry Ingram Moody Memorial Collection, for instance, brought us a portion of a wide-ranging collection of Australian art, including paintings, sculpture, drawings, and prints. Landscape oils by Australian impressionists Marchese Girolamo Ballatti Nerli, Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder, and John Mather can be found in Rare Books and Manuscripts, as well as sculpture by Clifford Last.

Rare Books and Manuscripts's holdings include 17th- and 18th-century imaginary voyages indicative of early European interest in Australia, including Gabriel de Foigny's La Terre Australe Connue (1676), and Denis Vairasse's Histoire de Sevarambes (1702). Traditional historical accounts are of interest both as history and as examples of the bookmaker's art; the 1787 second edition of The History of New Holland, George Barrington's The History of New South Wales (1802), and a first edition of John White's Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales (1790) are representative samples of classic Australiana.

Of literary interest are the productions of the Franfrolico Press and a run of presentation copies of the novels of Jack Lindsay. There is also a first edition of Henry Kendall's Poems and Songs (1862), and all of Henry Kingsley's work. Other significant items include G. B. Barton's Poets and Prose Writers of New South Wales (1866), the first English edition of Marcus Clarke's His Natural Life (1875), and many first editions and presentation copies of literary works ranging from Joseph Furphy's Such Is Life (1903) to George Johnston's My Brother Jack (1964). Contemporary materials are also collected, and the works of Judith Wright, Patrick Wright, the Lindsay family, Thea Astley, Elizabeth Jolley, Randolph Stow, Peter Porter, and literally scores of other writers are well represented. Rare Books and Manuscripts's collection also contains manuscript material, including the corrected typescript and proofs of Henry Handel Richardson's story "The Grown-Up Ball."

For more information about the Moody Memorial Collection, see Australiana in the Pattee Library (1957). For a more recent look at the Libraries' Australian and New Zealand holdings, see Nan Bowman Albinski's Australian/New Zealand Literature in the Pennsylvania State University Libraries: A Bibliography (1989) and A Calendar of Australian/New Zealand Letters, Documents, and Manuscripts in the Pennsylvania State University Libraries (1990). Both are available for sale through the University Libraries.

Rare Books and Manuscripts also maintains the archival records of the American Association of Australian Literary Studies (AAALS) and the files of the literary journal Antipodes.

 

Special Collections Library
104 Paterno Library
University Park, PA 16802
Telephone: (814) 865-7931, (814) 865-1793
Fax: (814) 863-5318

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