University of Virginia Library

III

To stimulate interest and encourage excellence in two kinds of activities that interested the Society, it soon established two contests, one in book collecting, for all students of the University, and another in printing, for printers throughout the State. The collecting competition, begun in the Society's first year and held in 1996 for the forty-first time, has proven the chief way for the Society to serve the element of the University otherwise little affected by its activities--its undergraduates. When Wyllie was presented with the Raven Award by University students in 1952, the outstanding reason noted by the undergraduate presenters was in fact the inauguration and continuation of the contest.

Wyllie and Massey were the chief promoters of the competition (Bowers served as a judge the first year and a couple times thereafter), with Wyllie coordinating activities on the University Grounds (including collecting entries at the Rare Book Room) and Massey anonymously funding the prizes (for over two decades). The University's rare book curators have always been members of the Society's Council and hence logical members of the Awards Committee; besides their ability to assess the quality of collections, they have a professional interest on behalf of the library in knowing what kind of books are being brought together around them. Other judges have been drawn from the Society's Council, from the English Department faculty, and from the wider Charlottesville membership. (The report of the 1964 committee also pointed out that "We were happy to be joined by Mr. Jacob Blanck in our deliberations.") Irby Cauthen, who had won first prize as a graduate student in 1949 with his collection on the architecture of Charleston, South Carolina, joined the panel as a "former winner" in 1951; a few years later he returned to the University as a member of the English Department faculty and from 1960 through 1989 he served on the committee, most of the time as its chair, with the rare book curators William Runge and, later, Julius Barclay. During those years the drop-off point for entries was either the English Department or the Rare Book Room, reflecting not only the people involved but also the interests strongly represented. Though others replaced Cauthen and Barclay after 1989 following their retirements from the University, the contest instructions have continued to specify that entries be submitted to people in the English Department or what is now Special Collections.

The regulations for the contest changed over the years, but one ground rule remained: as Wyllie told the student paper, the Cavalier Daily, on 22 February 1949, entries are judged "not on the basis of expense but on the coherence" of the books submitted. After the first contest (in the spring of 1948), in which all entries were considered together, the Council invited a student member of the committee, George Williams, to systemize the rules. Beginning the next year entries were invited in two categories: "Class A: Collections which have been assembled with primarily a bibliographical interest in mind. (Such a collection might include all the editions of any one work or any one author, first editions of modern poets, association copies, or items of this type.) Class B: Collections which have been assembled with primarily an interest in study, reading, or scholarship in mind. (Such a collection might include various works relating to any field or fields.)" With an implicit acknowledgement that not all meritorious entries fit one of those groupings, the Committee intermittently added awards for "Best" or "Unusual" student libraries in the 1960s and '70s. The challenge of attracting an equal number of entries in the divisions and the difficulty of maintaining a clear distinction between these overlapping sections prompted a return to an all-encompassing single category in 1990.

The biggest shift during those four decades occurred in the contests for 1956 through 1961, when the "bibliographical" award was presented not specifically for book collecting but for bibliographical achievement in general. As the announcement of the 1960 contest described the honor, the prize "goes to a student who is interested in some phase of bibliography, either the exploration of a particular text or a collection of a series of editions by one particular writer." Under such guidelines, the award went in 1956, for instance, to George Walton Williams "in recognition of his bibliographical skills, and notably for his researches in the fields of Elizabethan and Charlestonian bibliography" and in 1959 to Donald E. Glover for "his study of the manuscript of Bret Harte's `Rose of Tuolomne,'" a manuscript in the Barrett collection of American literature in the University library. Other "bibliographical" winners in those years were Robert K. Turner (1957), Matthew Bruccoli (1957 and 1958), and Oliver Steele (1958 and 1961). The judges' verdicts were subsequently vindicated, for each of these winners went on to publish significant bibliographical scholarship (four of the five in Studies in Bibliography).

Another temporary change in those years was that the names of potential candidates were solicited from the University faculty. Turner's award in 1957 ultimately stemmed from the nomination Bowers sent to Massey: "It would be appropriate enough to give the award for bibliography to Robert K. Turner, who is doing a bibliographical dissertation,

and working on Nicholas Okes the Elizabethan printer and the text of Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid's Tragedy." The response of the 1956 collecting winner, Charles N. Biondi, reveals that contestants in that category too were sought out; in his letter of thanks he not only expressed amazement at being chosen but recalled his surprise at hearing of the contest itself ("In fact I was not even aware of the practice of the Society to give this sort of recognition to student collectors"). Biondi's award showed that the collecting portion of the competition had also changed, for he was broadly honored "in recognition of his talents as a bibliophile, and notably for his collecting interests in the fields of early prints and fore edge paintings of American scenes."

Attracting the attention of potential contestants was always a challenge. In early years Wyllie prepared announcements that teachers were asked to read in class; the weight of the request increased in the 1960s, when Irby Cauthen, chair of the Awards Committee, issued these to his faculty as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. The University News Service circulated word of impending contests and of their outcomes, resulting in stories in both the student paper and the Charlottesville Daily Progress. Word also extended far beyond the local community. In his column "Books Alive" in the Chicago Sunday Tribune of 29 June 1952, Vincent Starrett noted that "Top awards in the University of Virginia's annual student book collectors' contest for 1952 went to young men [Robert Campbell, Jr., and Norris Randolph] who collected first editions of Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde." This attention was not unambiguous, however; it appeared in the "No Comment Department" along with a list of terms for different forms of button collecting and with announcement of a new edition of Shakespeare in which "`all the famous and most quotable passages' will be printed in red."

In 1967 the Society began to advertise the contest through posters on University bulletin boards. The original design, used at least four times, reflected its era: a brightly colored maze (changing its hue from one year to the next), with the pattern overwhelming the text located in the bottom quarter of the sheet. Posters in the mid and late '70s were almost entirely typographical; among them were a couple with orange and red type on off-white paper, and one printed in black and burgundy with the simple outlines of book covers (this one designed by a 1979 winner, Peter Brehm--whose collection was entitled "The Art and History of the Book"). The form introduced in 1980 continued through 1994--an oblong design with the competition title on the left and details of the contest on the open pages of a book to its right. The first of this series was the most unusual: the left-hand page had a running title, and the text below began in mid sentence. The right-hand page contained the

Society's name and a colophon--including the number of the copy in an edition of 100.

One of the surest ways of attracting participation was by offering prizes--cash every time, along with a year's membership in the Bibliographical Society, and sometimes a volume on book collecting (from 1984 through 1987), membership in the friends or "Associates" group of the University Library (from 1989), and gift certificates from local booksellers. (In 1952 the editor of the Amateur Book Collector also contributed a year's subscription.) In a letter on 9 March 1949 to student committee member George Williams, who apparently had suggested lower amounts, Massey explained the thinking behind his contributions: "Since I have already undertaken to provide privately whatever cash is needed for the prizes you will suffer no pain when I suggest two first prizes of $15 each, and two second prizes of $10 each. . . . My thought is simply to provide the impetus these larger sums would give to the hesitant or lazy student book collectors." For the first two years the first-place winner in each category received $15 (with descending amounts for other places); that amount rose to $20 in 1950 and then $25 in 1952, where it remained until it jumped to $100 in 1989.

In 1948 C. C. Wells of the New Dominion Book Shop in Charlottesville awarded a $2.00 credit for all entrants who did not win one of the first three places; he again offered credits the following year, as did W. H. Lowdermilk and Co. of Washington, D.C. That year three other local bookstores-- Anderson Brothers, University Book Store, and Jameson Book Store--worked together and through their representative Roscoe S. Adams arranged further credits totalling $20.00 to winners of the first three places in each category. The four Charlottesville dealers together donated $32.00 in credits for the 1950 contest, but such contributions then faded away until they were resurrected in 1989. The booksellers' response to the invitation for each to provide a $25 gift certificates was enthusiastic ("Great idea!"; "I will be most happy to donate"; "I have long been a proponent of such an idea"), and nine dealers contributed that year (growing to twelve in 1996). In 1994 the Booksellers at 310 Market Street also held a reception for that year's winners. The renewed involvement of booksellers in the life of the Society not only marked a re-establishment of the relationship with one of the group's original constituencies but also helped the Society heighten the level of collecting awareness among students who were living in what long had been an active book town.

With the award has also come a small bit of public recognition. In the early years the winners were announced with appropriate suspense at one of the Society's evening lectures. Winners who are graduating

have their honor listed in the University's commencement program. For at least the first five years, and regularly since 1979, the winning entries have been displayed in the University's Alderman Library--the early ones for a week in the McGregor and Public Documents rooms, and more recently for a month in that building's entrance hall. Over the years of the contest 163 students have received awards, 11 of them twice and 7 of them three times. (The contest has also attracted entrants who were unsuccessful several times.) In part because books tended to loom large in the consciousness of English students and because organizers of the contest often were from that department, many of the collections contained books by or about English or American literary figures. The chronological span represented in the most recent contest-- from Ben Jonson to Generation X writers--has been characteristic. The alphabetical range of literary subjects and authors has also been broad: Arthurian literature, Robert Browning, John Bunyan, Edgar Rice Burroughs (especially Tarzan), Erskine Caldwell (in lurid paperback), Charles Dickens, John Dos Passos, T. S. Eliot, "almost all editions of the complete works of George Farquhar," William Faulkner, Robert Frost, George Garrett, Ernest Hemingway, William Dean Howells, Jack Kerouac, D. H. Lawrence, George Meredith, the Sitwell family, Jesse Stuart, E. B. White, and Virginia Woolf. Related collections have focused on a genre or theme: manuscript diaries, eighteenth- century editions of fables, Greek and Latin classics, homosexuality and the homosexual in literature, French drama, and science fiction. (The 1964 commendations noted that Edward M. Turner, "the only undergraduate cited by the committee, has collected some 1,500 pieces of science fiction, a collection that, because of the collector's youth, indeed rivals the Clarkson collection at Harvard University which has 6,000 items.")

English Department students have not collected only literary writers, however, nor have entrants been limited to English majors. Most schools of the University have been represented over the half century, with frequent participation especially from students in Government and Foreign Affairs, History, Law, and Physics. A number of times travel accounts have appeared, along with several collections of maritime history. Several students have offered books on Central and South America, including a 1000- item collection by William R. Woods in 1959. Asian civilization has incited several entries, as have the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The Civil War and the Confederacy have proven popular, while other historical interests have found expression in books on old trials and on fifteenth-century France. The philosophy of science was the contribution of a graduate student in physics, and the arts have been represented by a variety of collections: Leonardo da Vinci, Hogarth prints, landscape gardening, architecture of Charleston, S.C., log houses, and a couple of

impressive groupings on music. In 1953 Roy E. Clark, a second-year College student, presented books "Concerning all phases of music from the physical aspect of sound to musical work, and including technological aspects, information on sound reproducing systems, music theory, important personages--composers and artists, program notes, history, symphonic and chamber music scores." Eighteen years later Law student Teri Noel Towe won with a collection that "centers around music, musical biography, musical scores, books on keyboard instruments and keyboard music, books on recordings, and finally an extensive library of recordings numbering over 3,000 pieces." Collections on bridge and on wrestling showed equal devotion, as did one that perhaps serves to symbolize many of those in the Society's first half century, a 1964 entry by William S. Kable on "the history of the book."

Though the contests have invariably attracted high quality entries, the number of contestants has fluctuated, thereby spurring periodic reflections about continuation of the undertaking. In June 1965 President Massey sent a memorandum to Council members in which he pondered the fate of what over more than a decade and a half had become a University institution:

The letters that he attached from recent winners were typical in their themes. George B. Goode, for example, made the most obvious but also the most important observation: "This has spurred my interests in book collecting"--adding that the award "raised my spirits at the most opportune time, in the midst of final exams." The encouragement the winners received was often as important as other considerations. In accepting the 1961 prize, for instance, Matthew Bruccoli wrote Massey that "As you know, I have received the research award [in 1957 and 1958], but I am even more pleased to be recognized as a collector." By the same token, the gifts of cash fueled the fire. Nathaniel P. Neblett observed in 1960 that "I shall be able to fill several gaps in my collection with this award," and James A. Means wrote the Society in 1970, "I am presently engaged in the rather difficult task of assembling a collection of Pope's works in early editions, and the Committee might be interested to know that their cash award will be spent in making an addition to this collection."

Despite notable successes and emulation elsewhere (SNS 18 reported that Dartmouth College had started a similar competition), questions about the contest's ongoing existence surfaced repeatedly starting in the late 1960s. The establishment in 1962 of the Amy Loveman National Award for student book collectors (for which the Society nominated local students) signalled a general interest in the activity early in that decade, but in 1968 Irby Cauthen reported to Massey that for the current local contest "Only these three entries have been received." His 1971 report pointed to further decline as well as rebound: "There were four entries this year, some improvement of the paucity of entries last year, and two of them describe truly outstanding collections." The next year was even better: "this year there were six entries of outstanding interest." But in 1974 the number was back down to three; Cauthen suggested that "The Executive Council may wish to consider whether to continue it with such a small response; contests such as this one seem to be losing their appeal among university students more rapidly than they should." A number of times the Council did vote to hold the contest biannually, although a consistent pattern did not readily develop (no contests were held in 1976, 1978, 1983, 1986, and 1988, and no entries were received in 1984). The Council determined most recently in 1990 that a two-year interval was needed for a suitable number of collections of sufficient quality to develop, and since then the competition has been held in the fall (instead of the spring, as previously) of even-numbered years.

Many of the effects of the contest are visible only against the backdrop of a breadth of years. In 1984 Robert W. Kitchell, wrote Rare Book Curator and Society Councilor Julius Barclay,

Many of the student collections led not only to greater ones but also to scholarly achievements based on them. The Pope collection to which James Means devoted his 1970 winnings came to include a unique volume of Pope's New Dunciad (reported in Notes and Queries in June 1973). Matthew Bruccoli's 1961 collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald's works presaged his role as the leading biographical scholar of that writer and also as the preeminent Fitzgerald collector. Maura Ives (1989) based her dissertation and a subsequent edition of George Meredith's short stories in large part on the copies she collected. Bradley Gunter (1967) had written his M.A. thesis on the subject of his collecting (T. S. Eliot), followed through with a dissertation on that author, and then produced three lists on Eliot for the Charles E. Merrill program in American Literature. Richard H. W. Dillard, whose collection of the writings of George Garrett (in 1964, the year the judges were advised by Jacob Blanck) "illustrated a high standard of the collection of the works of an author presently living and accessible," eventually wrote a book on Garrett. Two 1994 winners, Frank Grizzard (with his 500 copies of Pilgrim's Progress) and Kelly Tetterton (with editions of Woolf's Orlando) subsequently addressed an annual meeting of the Society about research stemming from their collections. (A 1996 winner, David L. Gants, who collected seventeenth-century editions of Ben Jonson for work on his bibliographical dissertation, had spoken earlier to the Society about his studies.)

While these examples suggest something of the role of collecting and of the contest in the lives of these students, a glimpse of what the Society hoped the competition could be is best exemplified by the winner of the first contest in 1948, Arthur Parsons Bean, Jr. In the 1978 exhibition keepsake for the display of his Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell Sitwell collection at the University of Virginia Library (The Sitwells: A Tapestry of Talent), Bean traced his progress as a collector:

This collecting spurred by the Society had direct scholarly fruit. On 29 September 1969 Bean, who was then teaching at American University in Washington, wrote Massey: The 1978 library exhibition, whose keepsake also included contributions by Francis T. S. Sitwell, Kenneth Clark, and Mildred K. Abraham, was a dramatic reprise of the 1948 display there of Bean's core collection; the 10 books had grown to more than 500, along with hundreds of other documents and artifacts, and the fruits of three decades of loving labor were now brought in their full glory to the public. This episode of the Bibliographical Society's service to the University, first to its students and then to its wider community, drew to fitting completion when Bean subsequently donated the collection ("which," he said, "was really born here") to the University Library.

Although in naming the Society its founders chose to align it more closely with the University than with the state as a whole, they remained alert to the community beyond Charlottesville. One way of manifesting that attention was to establish a contest for all printers of Virginia. In conjunction with the newly formed Virginia State Printers' Association, the Society sponsored three such competitions: in 1951 (for work produced from January 1950 through June 1951), 1952 (covering July 1951 through July 1952), and 1954 (for July 1952 through December 1953). The contest was created and conducted by President Massey and Secretary Wyllie, who duly signed the certificates that were awarded as prizes at the annual meeting of the Association. The appreciation was immediate: on 31 October 1951 August Dietz, Jr., a Richmond printer and a founder of the Association, wrote Massey, "You and John have started something for the printers in Virginia that will be a lasting memorial to both of you."

Entries were invited in fifteen categories (sixteen the third year), though the Society reserved the right to subdivide any section. The official categories ranged from books, pamphlets, and programs to prints, calendars, direct mail materials, and business forms. (Newspapers were excluded, for they were judged separately by the Virginia Press Association.) Entries poured in: 200 the first year, over 300 the second. Although the number of submissions the third year is not clear, it implicitly was high, for the number of "Certificates of Special Merit" for "special contributions to Virginia printing" was larger than ever before. The Society seems to have developed these awards as a form of "Honorable

Mention" in order to expand the number of printers it could recognize. The same impulse operated from the start as the Society exercised its option to subdivide categories. Already in the first year separate awards had been given for books produced for Virginia publishers and for out-of-state publishers, and for exhibition programs as well as dance programs and commencement programs.

The judges were drawn from the ranks of Bibliographical Society members in Charlottesville who were not directly connected with the Virginia printing trade and who were not to consider publications produced for the Society. The estimable quality of those judges further points to the fertile ground from which the Society arose. For the first competition they included John Canaday, formerly an art professor at the University and later the art critic of the New York Times; Harry Clemons, the University's librarian emeritus; Dan Healey, Charlottesville public librarian; and Charlotte Kohler, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review. Miss Kohler stayed on the panel a second year, to be joined by William B. O'Neal, curator of the University's Museum of Fine Arts, and Charlottesville architect W. E. Stainback. Another architect, Dale Hamilton, judged in the final year, along with two people who, like O'Neal, at one point served on the Society's Council: Eleanor Shea, Consultant in Prints to Alderman Library, and Charles W. Smith, Chairman of the school's Department of Fine Arts.

Press releases announcing the winners proudly noted their geographical distribution throughout Virginia, though the bulk of them clustered in the printing capital of the state, Richmond. Twenty-two firms won prizes in the three years the Society sponsored the contest, with Whittet & Shepperson of Richmond garnering the most-- nine. The William Byrd Press, also of Richmond, brought in eight (including for the Rosenbach catalog West of the Alleghenies); that this press published most of the early volumes of Studies in Bibliography pointed not to favoritism on the part of the judges but to the quality to which the Society had devoted itself. (Willis Shell of the Byrd press, who oversaw the production of Studies there, also won twice for productions of his private Attic Press.) Five-time winners included the Journalism Laboratory Press at Washington and Lee University; Stone Printing and Manufacturing Co. of Roanoke, from whose proprietor had earlier come to the University of Virginia an impressive collection of books illustrating the history of printing; and the Everett Waddey Company of Richmond. The University of Virginia Press, with whom the Society also issued many publications, won four times.

The winning entries were variously displayed at the Printers' Association convention and at the State Library, and they were also made available to schools and libraries requesting them. Though the connection

between the Society and the Association was by all indications cordial (the relationship included the Society's hosting of a coffee in Alderman Library for a regional meeting of the Society on 5 December 1953), the Society's sponsorship may have become a victim of the unmanageable deluge of interest it had provoked. In the fourth year of the Association's existence it took over the award itself, appropriately renamed for past- president Dietz, who had just died. For that competition it received 465 entries.