Newsletter of the

Society

Inside...

Other Newsletters

Return to home page

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 2001 and April 2002. Ten on-site researchers consulted Porter or Porter-related collections in the year covered by this report. Those from out-of-state came from Michigan, Virginia, and West Virginia. Foreign researchers included two from Japan and one from France. Telephone, mail, and e-mail inquiries have also been received from Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia. I also communicated with individuals from Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Great Britain, India, Japan, Mexico, The Netherlands, and Spain. During this period, the Libraries supplied 2,200 photocopies to meet researcher demand, provided twenty-five reproductions of photographs, and loaned twenty-seven reels of the microfilm edition of the Porter papers.

Popular interest in Porter remains high. There were 437 visitors to the Katherine Anne Porter Room in the last year, during which the room was open on fifty-eight Monday and Thursday afternoons. The faithful volunteer docents, Freddy Baer, Shirley Bauer, Dorothy Galvin, Beverly Lewoc, Joan Phelan, and Betty Warner, all returned to service in September 2001. Maria Walsh, the widow of my mentor Thomas Walsh, joined them in January. About fifty individuals visited the Porter Room during our fourth all-campus open house on April 27, 2002. The number of requests for group tours of the Porter Room increased as word of the new location and enhancements has spread. The College Park chapter of the AAUW, staff from the Division of Preservation and Access of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Preservation Committee of the Chesapeake Information and Research Library Alliance, and members of the Society of American Archivists visited in the last year. Visitors from on-campus groups included staff members from University Relations, Resident Life, and the Maryland English Institute, as well as graduate students from the College of Information Studies and members of the Campus Club, the organization for women faculty and staff and wives of faculty or staff. The Libraries' Porter holdings also benefited from significant effortfrom volunteer Bill Wilkins once again this year. His tenure has continued for six years and has been indispensable in providing all sorts of support.

The Libraries acquired two Porter-related holdings in the last year. The Papers of Janis P. Stout consist primarily of correspondence and research materials related to the publication of Katherine Anne Porter: A Sense of the Times (1995). A significant item is Cleanth Brooks's May 27, 1992, letter to Stout in which he discusses Porter's claim of membership in the Communist party in Mexico and her relationship with Tinkum Brooks. The Archives of the Atlantic Monthly came to the Libraries through the efforts of noted poet Peter Davison, who is currently Poetry Editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Concerned that the files of significant literary figures at the Atlantic Monthly be placed in appropriate repositories, Davidson offered the Porter files to the Libraries. His January 24, 2002, letter to me reads in part:

First, a note as to why this correspondence is surfacing at so late a date. In 1986 the then owner of The Atlantic Monthly, Mortimer Zuckerman, sold the book division of The Atlantic Monthly Company to Carl Navarre, in New York. The archives were sent along to Navarre, but after he in turn had sold the press to Morgan Entrekin, Mr. Entrekin tired of warehousing these archives and at our request returned them to us in Boston. For the last year or two I have been placing various archives (those of Alfred Kazin, Sean O'Faolain, Stanley Kunitz, et al.) with those libraries which house the major archives of the author involved.

From 1964 onward I was responsible for maintaining relations between Miss Porter and our Press, which had published Ship of Fools, even though Miss Porter's subsequent work was to have been published by Seymour Lawrence, who had championed her writings while directing the Press. I succeeded to the directorship when Lawrence departed, first for a berth at Alfred A. Knopf, and then at Delacorte Publishers. I had however been slightly acquainted with Miss Porter since my childhood, and had served a publishing apprenticeship with the firm of Harcourt, Brace, which had been Miss Porter's publishers for many years prior to her moving to the Atlantic Monthly Press in about 1955.

The donated correspondence files date from 1966 to 1980 and include items that are not duplicated in the Atlantic Monthly files in Porter's papers.

My colleagues and I in Special Collections have very happily settled into our new and spacious quarters in Hornbake Library. As I write this account, plans for celebrating our new facility are progressing. We are working with our new Development staff--Barbara Harr, Assistant Dean and Director of External Relations, and Michelle Wellens, Director of the Friends of the Libraries--and with an advisory committee to plan a schedule of events to begin in September 2002. At present, April or May 2003 is the likely date for an event focusing on Porter. When plans have been finalized, I will see that all members of the society receive invitations.

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, ra60@umail.umd.edu To locate the Katherine Anne Porter resources on the Libraries' Web site, begin at http://www.umd.edu/UMCP/ARCV/litmss.html and follow the appropriate links.