Literary biography is a distinctive literary genre. From Isaak Walton in the seventeenth century and Dr. Johnson in the eighteenth to the achievements of (largely American) biographers in recent decades, the literary biography has moved and inspired readers as well as assisting critical interpretation. Yet, in most instances, even in academic libraries, literary biography is underappreciated, and quite rare biographies can remain in the open stacks. The Literary Biography Depository seeks to identify and record the full range of achievement in this literary form and to build an archival collection of literary biographies as part of the national cultural heritage.
Scope
The Literary Biography Depository sets out, as a first stage, to make available in a single library every published biography in the English language of every American author. A second phase will cover British authors. To accommodate the shifting pattern of literary biography over more than two centuries, "biography" is defined to include autobiographies, diaries, journals, and letters, but we do not plan to cover surveys of an author's literary works that are mainly critical in nature. In addition, the Literary Biography Depository will embrace manuscript archives bearing on the practice of literary biography. In keeping with USC faculty interest in the profession of authorship, the collecting effort will focus on published and unpublished material bearing on author-editor-publisher relationships.
Plan of Work
The first phase of the Literary Biography Depository incorporates the following elements:
- a major exhibition of literary biography in November 1998, marking the 200th volume of the Columbia-based Dictionary of Literary Biography, announces the project
- a working list of American literary biographieswill provide the basis for collection review and assessment
- a systematic survey will be made of both special collections and the general stacks to identify the University of South Carolina's current holdings: most stack biographies will remain for general circulation, but older items that are now rare, valuable, very difficult to replace, or still in near-archival condition will be transferred to Special Collections
- key antiquarian booksellers will be alerted to the project's scope, and announcements will be placed in leading bibliographical, library, and booktrade periodicals
- major biographical publishers will be approached about donation of new and recent literary biographies from their lists, to ensure long-term preservation of their biographical publications: Bruccoli Clark Layman has given a lead in this by donating a full archival set of theDLB
- seminars and courses will be developed that explore the nature, significance, and variety of literary biography as a genre, a scholarly endeavor, and a publishing phenomenon
- endowments and other donations will be sought out to support acquisitions, conservation, and programs for the project
- a wants-list of classic literary biographies will be developed to provide friends of the project with specific gift-opportunities
- an annual awart, still to be named, will be created for a literary biographer for career achievement
- a distinguished advisory board of biographers, literary scholars, publishers, and librarians will be recruited
- based on experience and response during this first phase of work, future plans may include broadening the scope to include biographies of British authors, perhaps an expansion into biography from other disciplines such as science where the library already has special collections, and an endowed Center for Literary Biography, ensuring a long-term commitment not only to the preservation of literary biography but also to its study
- LitCheck: Thomas Cooper Library's Center for Literary Biography and the Department of English have initiated a new bibliographical project "LitCheck", giving bibliographies of novelists writing in English, whose career is centered in the period after 1950.
Inquiries
Inquiries about any aspect of the Literary Biography Depository may be directed to:
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Literary Biography Depository Project
Department of Rare Books & Special Collections
Thomas Cooper Library
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
Telephone: (803) 777-3847
Fax: (803) 777-4661
Email: tclrarebooks@mailbox.sc.edu
PGS
This library is a congressionaly designated depository for U.S. government documents. Public access to the government documents collections is guaranteed by public law.