WKU Purchases Collection
From Warren Scholar
March 28, 2003
Bowling Green, Ky. - Western Kentucky University has purchased one of the largest private collections of Robert Penn Warren materials from his bibliographer and scholar, James A. Grimshaw Jr.
The collection includes more than 1,200 items and was started 40 years ago when Grimshaw, regents professor of literature and language at Texas A & M University at Commerce, first became interested in Warren's works. It served as the basis for "Robert Penn Warren: A Descriptive Bibliography."
"I was most fortunate to have been Warren's bibliographer and to have known him for 15 years," Grimshaw said. "His passing on Sept. 15, 1989, is a loss of the literary profession"
WKU English Professor Mary Ellen Miller said the Robert Penn Warren Center board is thrilled to have the collection.
"Professor Grimshaw, as a lifelong Warren scholar and as Warren's bibliographer, has assembled a unique collection," she said. "These materials will provide an indispensable resource for all present and future Warren scholars."
The collection is a "rich complement" to the papers from Joseph Blotner, Warren's biographer, and to Warren's private, working library. That library was a gift from Warren's widow, Eleanor Clark Warren.
Grimshaw offered the collection with three conditions: that the collection stay together, that it be designated the James A. Grimshaw Jr. Collection to identify it in relation to the bibliographical work it represents, and that he have unlimited access to it for continued research in Warren studies.
While working on a new Warren bibliography, Grimshaw said he "realized the importance of placing this collection in a proper environment so that students, other scholars and readers of Warren's work will have access to it. The collection is significant because it contains numerous editions, printings and separate items of Warren's work, he said, including an extensive holding of early paperback editions of Warren's novels.
Warren, a Kentucky native, is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner in literature and poetry. He was named the first poet laureate in the United States in 1986.
Professor Miller said the collection is housed in the Warren Room in the Kentucky Library and is available for use.
Grimshaw will be the featured speaker at the 16th Annual Robert Penn Warren Symposium at Western on April 27. He will speak on "Collecting Robert Penn Warren: Confessions of an Errant Bibliographer" at 2 p.m. in the Garrett Conference Center.
For more information, contact Mary Ellen Miller at (270) 745-5721. More WKU news is available on the World Wide Web at www.wku.edu. If you'd like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.
