Newsletter of the

Society

Porter Activities at the University of Maryland Libraries

By Beth Alvarez, University of Maryland

This report on the activities related to the Papers of Katherine Anne Porter and other Porter-related collections at the University of Maryland Libraries covers the period between May 2002 and April 2003. Eight on-site researchers consulted Porter or Porter-related collections in the year covered by this report. All but of two of them were from the University of Maryland; two foreign researchers visited from the Netherlands. Telephone, mail, and e-mail inquiries have also been received from Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana. Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. I also communicated with individuals from Australia, Austria, China, France, Great Britain, India, Japan, Morocco, the Netherlands, Spain, and Thailand. During this period, the Libraries supplied 1,093 photocopies to meet researcher demand, provided seven reproductions of photographs, and loaned fifteen reels of the microfilm edition of the Porter papers. Porter's nephew Paul Porter made a significant donation to his papers: Armand Thibault de Navarre's preliminary sketch of the oil portrait of Porter that is a prominent feature of the Katherine Anne Porter Room. Barbara Thompson Davis, the Trustee for the Literary Estate of Katherine Anne Porter, donated a valuable accretion to the Papers of Isabel Bayley, Porter's first literary trustee.

Popular interest in Porter diminished a bit from 2001-2002. There were 299 visitors to the Katherine Anne Porter Room in the last year, during which the room was open on fifty Monday and Thursday afternoons. All of the volunteer docents, Freddy Baer, Shirley Bauer, Dorothy Galvin, Beverly Lewoc, Joan Phelan, Betty Warner, and Maria Walsh, returned to service in September 2002. About forty individuals visited the Porter Room during our fifth all-campus open house on April 26, 2002. Visitors from on-campus groups during the year included staff members from University Relations, graduate students from the Maryland English Institute and Student Archivists at Maryland, and students from an undergraduate English class entitled Literary Works by Women.

Some of the interesting guests that I personally entertained in the Porter Room included archival colleagues from the Smithsonian Institution; Carole Elkins Neal, the daughter of the late President of the University of Maryland Wilson Elkins, who came with her high school English teacher, Eugene Moran; Bill Mayhew, brother of the late Joe Mayhew who painted Porter's wooden coffin; E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr., Porter's friend and lawyer; and a high school student completing a project on Porter. In November, a crew from Black Canyon Productions used the Porter Room as a location for some of the interviews that appeared in the documentary on Maryland basketball that aired during the NCAA basketball tournament. The highlight of the year was the October 21-25 visit of Paul Porter. He was able to see the new Porter Room in Hornbake Library and to provide advice on its arrangement and organization. The Libraries were delighted to recognize his generosity and support over the years, especially for his gift that enabled the restoration of the eighteenth century canapé. It was wonderful to meet several of Mr. Porter's east coast friends who travelled to College Park to visit with him during his stay. These included Gaynor Coté and Barry Talesnick of Brooklyn, New York, and Blaine Butler of New Haven, Connecticut.

Since April 2002, my travels related to Katherine Anne Porter have taken me New York City, southern California, and upstate New York. Last year's issue of the newsletter covered the awarding of the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction to Lynn Freed, which I was privileged to witness as the guest of Porter literary trustee Barbara Davis. When I was in New York City for the Modern Language Association Convention in late December, I visited Mrs. Davis and, as her guest, attended a performance of the musical "Imaginary Friends" based on Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy. During the my stay in southern California for the American Literature Association conference in May 2002, my husband and I made a pilgrimage to Santa Monica and located the three residences where Porter lived in or near that city between April 1945 and November 1947. With Barbara Harr, Assistant Dean and Director of External Relations, I attended the Yaddo Summer Benefit (covered elsewhere in this issue) in late June 2002. As Yaddo is near Malta, New York, the location of South Hill, the only home that Porter ever owned, Sue and Tom Nolen, the current owners, invited my colleague and me to visit. We enjoyed touring the beautiful grounds, seeing the renovations of the house, and exchanging stories about Porter and Toni Willison, the former owner.

As I write this account, the final plans are in place for the Friends of the Libraries gala, scheduled for June 12. This event will conclude the series of events celebrating our newly renovated facility that has occupied a great deal of my time and that of my Special Collections' colleagues this year. The April 13 "Salute to Katherine Anne Porter" (also covered elsewhere in this issue) was one of ten festive events highlighting the valuable collections housed in Hornbake Library. With the momentum gathered from this year's efforts, we are exploring the possibility of staging a full production of Laura Furman and Lynn Miller's Passenger on the Ship of Fools at the University of Maryland. If that comes to fruition, it will take place in the university's fabulous Clarice C. Smith Performing Arts Center in Spring 2005.

Anyone who has questions concerning the Porter Room or the Libraries' Porter holdings should not hesitate to contact me, Curator of Literary Manuscripts, Archives and Manuscripts, Hornbake Library, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, 301-405-9298, alvarez@umd.edu. To locate the Katherine Anne Porter resources on the Libraries' Web site, begin at http://www.lib.umd.edu/ARCV/litmss and follow the appropriate links.