Collecting area: Literature & language

Russel K. Alspach earned his PhD in 1932 from the University of Pennsylvania where he taught English from 1924-1942. After four years of service in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he spent eighteen years as head of the Department of English at West Point Military Academy before retiring in 1965 with the rank of Brigadier General. A specialist in Irish literature with wide ranging interests running from William Butler Yeats to Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Faulkner, Alspach published prolifically throughout his career. He took a post-retirement appointment at UMass in 1966, but hardly retired, eventually becoming Head of the Department of English, and teaching until his final retirement and death in 1980.

The Alspach Papers consist of professional correspondence, drafts of writing, and reviews written by Russell K. Alspach. The small collection includes grant applications and notes for Alspach’s Yeats Study Series, as well as a 3.75 inch monographic recording of readings and music by unidentified artists. The Department of Special Collections and University Archives is also home to the Alspach Yeats Collection of rare books.

Ellsworth “Dutchy” Barnard attended Massachusetts Agricultural College, and received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1928. Barnard began teaching college English in 1930 at Massachusetts State College. In the fall of 1957 he took a position at Northern Michigan University (NMU). As chairman of the English department, Barnard presided over a selection committee which brought the first African-American faculty member to NMU. During the 1967-1968 academic year, he led the faculty and student body in protesting the dismissal of Bob McClellan, a history professor. Although the effort to reappoint McClellan was successful, Barnard had already tendered his resignation at NMU and returned to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for the 1968-1969 academic year. He ended his career at UMass as the Ombudsperson, the first to fill that office. Barnard retired in 1973 and lived in Amherst until his death in December 2003.

Barnard’s papers document his distinguished career as an English professor and author, as well as his social activism, particularly on behalf of the environment. They consist of course materials, personal and professional correspondence, drafts of essays, lectures and chapters, published works, a collection of political mailings, a number of artifacts both from the University of Massachusetts and other educational institutions and organizations, and a number of poems by Barnard and others.

View the Ellsworth and Mary Barnard oral history

A scholar of early modern British literature, Joe Black received his BA and PhD from the University of Toronto and taught for several years at the University of Tennessee Knoxville before joining the English faculty at UMass Amherst in 1994. Rooted in the history of the book, his research on seventeenth-century literature has examined the intersection between writing and the material and social context of production as well as the dialogue between print and manuscript culture.

The Black collection is an eclectic assemblage of American imprints designed to assist study and instruction in the history of the book. The collection includes two long runs of pulp novels, Beadle’s Frontier Series and the American Revolution-inspired Liberty Boys of ’76, examples of almanacs, prompt books, and works form the early national period in publishers’ bindings.

View the full Black collection in the library’s catalog.

A constructed language developed by a Polish physician, L.L. Zamenhof, and first published in 1887, Esperanto is the most widely spoken auxiliary language in the world. Fundamentally utopian in origin, Esperanto is a simplified and highly rationalized language derived from a pastiche of languages, primarily European. By creating a universal second language, Zamenhof hoped that Esperanto would help transcend national and cultural boundaries and thus promote peace and understanding in a fractious world. Allan Boschen, an engineer with General Electric in Pittsfield, was a student and teacher of Esperanto and longtime officer with the Esperanto Society of New England.

The Esperanto book collection includes instructional materials in the language from around the world along with a diversity of imprints ranging from novels and poetry to travel books, histories and biographies, political writings, materials on China and Vietnam, children’s literature, and even a cookbook. We expect to add to the collection in future.

The printed works are temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request printed materials from this collection.

A significant African American poet of the generation of the 1960s, Dudley Randall was an even more significant publisher of emerging African American poets and writers. Publishing works by important writers from Gwendolyn Brooks to Haki Madhubuti, Alice Walker, Etheridge Knight, Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, and Sonia Sanchez, his Broadside Press in Detroit became an important contributor to the Black Arts Movement.
The Broadside Press Collection includes approximately 200 titles published by Randall’s press during its first decade of operation, the period of its most profound cultural influence. The printed works are divided into five series, Broadside poets (including chapbooks, books of poetry, and posters), anthologies, children’s books, the Broadside Critics Series (works of literary criticism by African American authors), and the Broadsides Series. . The collection also includes a selection of items used in promoting Broadside Press publications, including a broken run of the irregularly published Broadside News, press releases, catalogs, and fliers and advertising cards.

View the collection

Jules Chametzky is a professor of English, emeritus, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the founder (1958) and co-editor of The Massachusetts Review. Born May 24, 1928, in Brooklyn, NY, Chametzky attended Brooklyn College (B.A., 1950) and the University of Minnesota (M.A. 1952; PhD, 1958). During his noteworthy career, he taught at the University of Minnesota, Boston University, Yale University, the Free University of Berlin, and UMass Amherst (1959-present). A specialist in Jewish American literary history, Chametzky was twice a Fullbright Professor, and he has contributed his time to the Modern Language Association of America, the American Association of University Professors, the American Studies Association, and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines (Secretary of the Executive Committee, 1967-1972). His many publications include The Fiction of Abraham Cahan, Our Decentralized Literature: Cultural Mediations in Selected Jewish and Southern Writers, and The Rise of David Levinsky.

The Chametzky Papers document Chametzky’s career as an educator, advocate, and academic pioneer. Included in the collection are professional correspondence, notes compiled for research and teaching, committee and meeting notes, travel documents and memorabilia, and a series of materials relating to the founding of The Massachusetts Review and the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1911, Dr. Clark accepted the position of director of the Chapel of the Comforter in Greenwich Village, New York, a mission that abandoned its traditional Christian practices in favor of the teachings of theosophy. A prolific writer and lecturer, Clark stressed in his work the similarities between Eastern and Western religions, and emphasized his belief that unity among religions would bring about a spiritual re-awakening throughout the world. After serving as director of the Chapel of the Comforter for more than forty years, Clark retired in 1950.

Clark’s papers document his career as a professor of English, Episcopal priest, theosophist, and Director of the Chapel of the Comforter. Consisting of correspondence, lecture notes, and his writings, the collection chronicles his religious beliefs as well as his research on Emily Dickinson and her poetry.

Access restrictions: Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA in advance to request materials from this collection.

A scholar of Yeats and long-time professor of English at UMass Amherst, David Ridgley Clark was born in Seymour, Conn., in Sept. 1920, the son of a school superintendent. A convinced Quaker, Clark was part of a pacifist Ashram in Harlem in 1941 and became a conscientious objector during the Second World War, working as an orderly at a mental hospital in Concord, N.H., and as a forest fire fighter in Oregon as part of his alternative service. When he returned to civilian life, he worked his way through Wesleyan University, receiving his BA in 1947, before earning a MA at Yale in 1950 and doctorate in 1955 for a study of William Butler Yeats and the Theatre of desolate reality. Beginning at UMass while still in graduate school, Clark quickly became a key member of a rising contingent in the humanities. Along with Sidney Kaplan, Jules Chametzky, and Leon Stein, he was instrumental in founding the University of Massachusetts Press, as well as the Massachusetts Review, and he was credited with starting a program with the National Association of Educational Broadcasting that brought major poets to read their work on the radio. In the late 1970s, he served as chair of the English Department and helped to organize the Five College Irish Studies Program. After his retirement from UMass in 1985, Clark taught briefly at Williams College and served as chair of English at St. Mary’s College from 1985-87. He settled in Sequim, Wash., after his full retirement, where he died on Jan. 11, 2010.

The Clark Papers document the research and professional life of an influential member of the English faculty at UMass Amherst. The collection contains a particularly rich assemblage of Clark’s notes and writings on W.B. Yeats, but includes materials relating to his efforts in building the English program and, to a lesser degree, the UMass Press and Massachusetts Review.

In taut and haunting prose, Andrew Coburn left a memorable impression as both novelist and journalist. Born in Exeter, N.H., on May 1, 1932, Coburn became serious about writing while fulfilling his military duty in Germany and earning a degree in English at Suffolk University. After landing a position with the local newspaper, the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, he put his talents to good use. Building his career as a journalist covering organized crime by day, he managed to spend nearly every night writing fiction until dawn. His successes on the beat earned him steady promotions all the way to city editor, and he eventually founded two newspapers of his own, though fiction would be his future. Winning a Eugene Saxton Fellowship in 1965, Coburn drew upon his experiences on the streets of Lawrence to publish his first novel, The Trespassers, in 1974, followed by The Babysitter in 1979, and eventually eleven other novels, a novella, and a host of short stories and essays. A master of language and dialogue grounded in a strong sense of place, Coburn won both wide readership and praise from other writers. His work has garnered nominations for the Edgar Allan Poe Award and Pushcart Prize and has been translated into 14 languages. Three of his novels have been made into films in France. He was married to Bernadine Casey Coburn, a former journalist and public relations expert, with whom he had one son and four daughters.

The Coburn Papers contain working drafts and page proofs of Andrew Coburn’s novels and short stories, along with selected correspondence, and dozens of journals, scrapbooks, and notebooks used in his fiction. In many cases, the completeness of the collection makes it possible to follow a work from its earliest inception, often recorded as a sketch (literal or in prose), through to its final iteration.

A scholar of eighteenth century British literature and culture, Thomas W. Copeland began what would become more than half a century of research on the statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke while studying for his doctorate at Yale (1933). After publication of his dissertation in 1949 as Our Eminent Friend Edmund Burke, Copeland was named managing editor of the ten-volume Correspondence (1958-1978). After academic appointments at Yale and the University of Chicago, he joined the faculty at UMass in 1957, remaining here until his retirement in 1976. A chair was established in his name in the Department of English.

The Copeland Papers are a rich collection of personal and professional correspondence, journals and writings from Copeland’s Yale years, manuscripts, typescripts, notes, and draft revisions of his works on Edmund Burke, and a journal chronicling Copeland’s four-year exercise in the daily practice of writing.