| |
Introduction
The Florida-based writer
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896-1953) is
best-know n for her Pulitzer-prizewinning
novel The Yearling (1938). This
exhibition covers the whole of her
writing career, from her earliest
magazine stories for McCall's,
her discovery by Scribner's Magazine
and Scribner's legendary editor
Maxwell Perkins, and the success of her
subsequent books, notably The
Yearling and Cross Creek
(1942).
This exhibition is the
first from the Robert D. Middendorf
Collection of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,
which the library acquired in 2005 from
Mr. Middendorf with a majority of gift from
the collector and with additional
support from donations to the library's
Treasures Acquisition Program. Along
with first editions and periodical
writings, in fine condition, some signed
or inscribed, the Middendorf Collection
also includes letters, proofs, and movie
memorabilia.
The exhibition was opened
with a reception for Thomas Cooper
Society members and a talk about
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings by a
distinguished USC alumnus, Professor
Rodger L. Tarr of Illinois State
University, who has published five books
on Rawlings including an edition of
Rawlings’s letters to Maxwell Perkins.
In Professor Tarr’s standard
Pittsburgh Bibliography of Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings, which is cited as “Tarr” in
the exhibit descriptions, items in the Middendorf Collection are cited by the
location symbol “RM.”
The Middendorf collection
supports other recent acquisitions made
through the Donna I. Sorensen Endowment
for Southern Women in the Arts, and
(through the Rawlings/Scribner/ Perkins
connection) it relates closely also to
Thomas Cooper Library’s other
collections of Scribner authors and
editords: the
Matthew J. & Arlyn Bruccoli Collection
of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Speiser &
Easterling-Hallman Collection of Ernest
Hemingway, the James Dickey Library,
letters of Maxwell Perkins, and
the John Hall Wheelock Archive.
Patrick Scott,
Director
of Special Collections
|
This page updated
August 24, 2006