Treasure Trove | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The author of this post, Spaine Stephens, is a contributor to ECU News Services.

ECU collection provides insight into writers' connections, process

    Faculty, curators and administrators are still discovering just how momentous East Carolina University's collection of literary work, letters and mementos from famous Southern writers could turn out to be.

    Joyner Library's Stuart Wright Collection, a treasure trove of letters, notes, books, photographs and other memorabilia that detail the lives and works of the authors and poets, is in the process of being digitized and stored.

    "We're working on digitizing more components of the collection so more people can access it online," said Jan Lewis, director of Joyner Library.

    The system will help faculty, students, scholars, biographers and historians wade through the vast expanse of documents and books that were both gifted by collector Stuart Wright and acquired through additional avenues from Wright's properties in North Carolina and the United Kingdom.

    Access to the items-many of which have never before been studied-offer insight into the relationships and creative processes of the writers.

    The Stuart Wright Collection, which includes works and writings from William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, Tom Wolfe, John Updike, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers and other notable writers, stands out from similar collections at other universities and museums because of its breadth. "It's the scale and variety that make the difference here," said Dr. Jonathan Dembo, professor and special collections curator at Joyner Library.

    The variety and rich content of the collection have provided a platform for Joyner Library to host lectures and exhibits that explore the writers' best known craft-writing-but also showcase their other, lesser known hobbies. A collection of photographs taken and processed by prolific Southern author Eudora Welty is on display through Sept. 1 in the North Carolina Collection on the third floor of Joyner Library.

    The photographs are a part of the main Stuart Wright Collection, and are an example of the rare view it provides of the lives of the writers beyond the pages of their books or the lines of their poetry. Welty's photography exhibit is a glimpse of the author's interests and talents beyond the written word.

    Wright honed his interest in history and literature from a young age, and he befriended many authors before they became well known, through his work as a publisher and bibliographer. Some of the letters in the collection are written to Wright from the authors themselves. Other letters are part of correspondence between writers.

    "People will be able to look at these letters and see the associations between the different people," said Dr. Ralph Scott, who works with the books that are part of the Stuart Wright Collection. The collection strengthens ECU's case as a research university, particularly in the humanities, said Dr. Tom Douglass, associate professor of English.

    "We're quite lucky to have this collection," he said.

    Lewis said the collection opens doors for both graduate and undergraduate students to have unprecedented access to the workings of the writers' minds as they crafted novels and poems, and to the correspondence they shared with other writers.

    "We're looking forward to seeing some theses from ECU students that are based on these materials," she said. "Some of the undergraduate papers are really good."

    The Stuart Wright Collection began in 2009 when ECU alumnus Reid Overcash and his wife, Susan, gave the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences a collection of poetry and art by celebrated North Carolina poet A. R. Ammons. That collection served as the centerpiece for what would eventually grow to include more than 3,000 printed works and 5,000 manuscripts before ECU acquired more of Wright's collection in recent years.

    The A. R. Ammons Collection set the tone for the magnitude of the collection's quality. Ammons taught at Cornell University; while that institution owns a great deal of his professional work and related papers, ECU's Stuart Wright Collection shows Ammons' creative process. There are numerous drafts of Ammons' manuscripts, showing edits and different versions as the pieces evolved. Ammons grew up on a tobacco farm in Whiteville.

    "What we have here are his personal correspondence, drafts of his writing and proofs of his work," Dembo said. "You can see how his thoughts and his ideas about his projects changed bit by bit."

    That evidence of the writing process catches the attention of professors who teach about the writing process, Dembo said. Other parts of the collection-such as journal entries, miscellaneous notes tucked into books, and letters-give biographers and historians more leverage as they peek into the personal lives of the authors, he added.

    Those at ECU who have seen parts of the collection are eager for it to be available widely to students and faculty, which could happen as early as this fall as more pieces become digitally available.

    "It's amazing how it has expanded," Lewis said of the collection. "We have seen a tremendous amount of faculty and student engagement, which is what we wanted. We've only scratched the surface of what we're going to be able to do with it."

    The Stuart Wright Collection is housed in Joyner Library's Special Collections division.


Eudora Welty's "A House with Bottle Trees, 1941" is among the photographs in the Wright Collection.(Image courtesy of Joyner Library Special Collections division)


East Carolina University English professor Dr. Tom Douglass, left, speaks with collector Stuart Wright during a walking tour of Ludlow, England. Douglass was in England assessing Wright's collection for ECU. (Photo by Linda Fox)