Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 13, 1991 TAG: 9104130443
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THOMAS BOYER/ LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Some are priceless, like the 376 odd-sized bits of paper on which Walt Whitman penned "Leaves of Grass." Others Barrett procured from bargain bins in the dusty corners of bookshops, the works of writers whose readers were long extinct.
Now Barrett's library, 35,000 volumes and 115,000 manuscripts conservatively valued at $25 million, belongs to the University of Virginia.
UVa announced Friday that Barrett donated the final portion of his book collection to his alma mater this week. The gift, which has been made over 35 years, is the richest ever to Thomas Jefferson's university. But UVa officials said its academic value is inestimable.
"For a scholar of literature of this period, it's absolutely a Mecca," said Joan Crane, curator of American literature for the UVa's Alderman Libraries. "There's still a great deal of important material that hasn't been sufficiently investigated, and over the coming centuries I daresay it will be."
Barrett, 89, lives in retirement in Charlottesville. Son of a newspaper editor in Alexandria, he attended UVa from 1917 to 1920 and made his fortune in shipping in New York. He collected books by English and European authors, but after World War II began to build a definitive collection of American literature, at the time a subject neglected by scholars and book collectors.
"It certainly wasn't at that time a very popular kind of thing," said Edmund Berkeley Jr., UVa's director of special collections, who was sipping champagne with his staff Friday. "From the beginning, he had the idea that a collection like this could be a national treasure, which it can be called quite justifiably."
Among the Barrett collection's brightest gems:
The only surviving copy of Robert Frost's first published book of poetry.
The manuscript to John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath," to which UVa last month added the original printer's galley proofs - complete with Steinbeck's handwritten corrections.
A first printing of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, of which there are 17 in existence.
Stephen Crane's handwritten draft of "The Red Badge of Courage."
A first edition of Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog," with the author's inscription: "To my mother, the best friend I ever had, and the truest."
But what distinguished Barrett from many other prominent book collectors was his interest in the not-so-famous as well - "what we call bread-and-butter books," Berkeley said.
For instance, Barrett bought all he could of F. Marion Crawford, a largely forgotten turn-of-the-century writer who once had a huge following. Works like Crawford's remain extremely valuable to literary scholars and historians, and some in Barrett's collection might have been lost had he not bought them.
For years, Barrett enlisted the help of booksellers around the country to help him acquire what is considered one of the premier collections of 19th-century American literature.
Much of Barrett's collection was assembled while he was president of the North Atlantic and Gulf Steamship Co. and helping to rear six children. In 1954, he sold his interest in the company to devote more time to buying books. It helped that rare book prices fell after World War II, and Barrett was able to pick up some books for a few dollars - such as first editions of "Leaves of Grass" - that are worth tens of thousands today.
One of Barrett's longtime acquaintances in the book field said the collection compares favorably to its counterparts in the university libraries of Yale and Harvard, even though it is largely the work of one collector.
"There's never been a private collection like that assembled," said Franklin Gilliam, a bookseller of 39 years experience who is appraising Barrett's collection for UVa. "How he managed to get all this done, I'm still flabbergasted to consider. It's really one of the extraordinary collecting feats of one time."
Gilliam has been in Charlottesville 14 months appraising Barrett's books and manuscripts, working in alphabetical order.
"I just hit the letter D," he said.
by CNB