One of my favorite things to do is catalog our unprocessed collections, creating a finding aid by describing each item in each folder in each box of a particular collection…it’s often tedious, but nerd that I am, I often love tedious things. I just completed the finding aid for our small collection about Stephen Crane, which you can find here.
While preparing this post, I stumbled across an informative, short blog post about Stephen Crane written by a Special Collections GA back in 2012, which I am linking here. That post focused primarily on the rare, signed first edition of Crane’s grim book Maggie; there is a brief reference to “the assortment of secondary critical material” in the Collection, which is the material I’ve just worked through. It’s mostly book reviews and articles about Crane’s life, his common-law wife Cora, or about the variety of people who wrote about him in the decades following his untimely death. These materials were clipped from newspapers and magazines, although there are a few sketches and booklets from commercial and academic sources as well.
Ready for Halloween when you are!
This moody little sketch depicts the English estate that Stephen and Cora lived in from 1899-1900. Brede Place is about two hours southeast of London, not far from Hastings. It was a relic when the Cranes lived there a century ago which makes me wonder what condition it’s in today. Clearly I need to go investigate in person (until reality reminds me about traveling in the time of Covid, sigh).
$600 in 1948!
This little advertisement might not seem like much, but I’d love to hop in my time machine and get books that were already antiques back in 1948. According to my exhaustive 0.5 second Google search, $600 dollars in 1948 is roughly equivalent to $6,471 dollars today.
mais oui s’il vous plaît
Although Stephen Crane lived in the US and briefly in England, and wrote about American experiences, this bulletin was part of a series about American authors and books produced at Palais Université in Strasbourg in the the early 1950s.
Living that highfalutin lifestyle
This dry little comic from the New York Times referenced Crane as quality literature for the erudite gentleman, which is a far cry from his early reputation, showing how much his persona changed since his 1900 death from tuberculosis. (Incidentally, we have quite a Robert Graves collection as well.)
Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to read a book described like that?
If you read the article, the title will seem misleading. This short article reviews a fictionalized biography about Stephen Crane rather well. Glancing over reviews like these, I noticed a theme that Crane is considered a ‘forgotten author’ or a ‘neglected genius’ but judging by the amount of material dedicated to documenting his life and work within this small collection, I think Crane’s devotees have carved out quite a literary niche for him to occupy indefinitely.
If you would like to see The Stephen Crane Collection or any of the many others we hold, please contact us at speccoll@utulsa.edu for arrangements. We are currently open only to TU students, faculty, and staff by appointments made at least 24 hours in advance. You are also welcome to browse our Catalog and Digital Collections and request photocopies or digital scans of materials through the same email. Kelsey and I fulfill requests as quickly as possible, but especially large requests or a high volume of requests may take up to 4-6 weeks. We are happy to help you as best we can and we hope that you stay safe and healthy!