The Collections

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Sevier Collection
The Sevier Collection is a general collection of rare books gathered over the history of the Vanderbilt University Library. It includes acquisitions by gift of early university faculty; selected signed and association copies; rare books in divinity, history of religion, and Methodism; books about books, fine binding, paper-making, and printing; faculty monographs; books by and about members of the Vanderbilt Family; significant Mark Twain editions; a collection of 18th and 19th-century accounts by travelers to Latin America; Mesoamerican codices; and a subject collection in demonology and witchcraft. Publication dates range from the incunabula period to the present, the fifteenth through the twenty-first centuries.

Jesse Ely Wills Collection
The Wills Collection gathers together the published works of the twentieth century writers of the Fugitive Group, centered at Vanderbilt, and the later group of Agrarian essayists who published I'll Take My Stand in 1930. The collection now numbers over 1,300 volumes and includes all monographs of the twenty-four figures, secondary scholarly material, and writings of their disciples and associates. It is named for the patron of the collection, one of the Fugitive poets, and a major sponsor of the 1969 addition to the Jean and Alexander Heard Library building in which the Fugitive Room exhibits area and the collection are housed.

Sam Fleming Southern Civilization Collection
This collection consists of published materials on the social, intellectual, and educational history of the South since the Civil War. Also contained in the collection are first editions of Southern literary works by authors not closely associated with the Fugitives, including those of George Washington Cable, Thomas Dixon, Eudora Welty, Elizabeth Spencer, Tennessee Williams, Walker Percy, and others. An important component is a collection of pamphlets covering such topics as civil rights, tenant farming, labor, women's history, industry, social reform, public health, and education.

Vanderbilt Collection
The Vanderbilt Collection consists of works published under the auspices of Vanderbilt University. It contains historic and current serial publications of the university including a complete set of books published by Vanderbilt University Press; bulletins of the university from 1875 to the present; student yearbooks, the Comet and the Commodore, 1897 to the present; theses and dissertations accepted by the university; and the student newspaper, The Hustler.

Items in these book collections are searchable through ACORN, the Vanderbilt University Library Catalog.

Books | Manuscripts | University Archives | Photographs | University Memorabilia | Virtual Reading Room

Fugitive/Agrarian Collection
The Fugitive/Agrarian Manuscript Collection consists of the papers of several members of both of these important literary groups, including John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, Jesse Ely Wills, Andrew Nelson Lytle, Frank Lawrence Owsley, Herman Clarence Nixon, James M. Frank, and Walter Clyde Curry. Also included is a general collection of Fugitive and Agrarian materials, in which all the members of both groups are well-represented. Efforts to gather documentation of the groups' activities and interaction have led to the acquisition of many of their distinguished associates' papers, including those of Peter Taylor, Edwin Mims, Brainard and Frances Neel Cheney, Richmond Croom Beatty, Richard Weaver, George Marion O'Donnell, and David McDowell, among others.

Southern Civilization Collection
The Southern Civilization Manuscript Collection documents the social, intellectual, and educational history of the South in the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Collecting also emphasizes the role of women and African Americans in the development of the modern South. This concentration has resulted in the acquisition of the papers of civil rights leaders Kelly Miller Smith and Melvin Watson, political and social activists Elizabeth Denny Vann and Mary K. (Molly) Todd, publisher James G. Stahlman, local historian Alfred Leland Crabb, and writer and Southern commentator John Egerton. The interviews and research that resulted in V. O. Key's landmark "Southern Politics in State and Nation" are housed in Special Collections, as are the research for Key associate and Vanderbilt chancellor emeriti Alexander Heard's "The Costs of Democracy and Made in America: Improving the Nomination and Election of Presidents." The records of early Nashville educational institution Wallace University School also reside in Special Collections. The struggles to fund late nineteenth-century public education in the South are well documented in the papers of the Peabody Education Fund.

Performing Arts Collections
The focus on the Performing Arts began with the acquisition of the collection of Francis Robinson, Vanderbilt alumnus and former assistant manager of the Metropolitan Opera. Also included in Performing Arts are the papers of Oscar-winning director Delbert Mann; John Lark Taylor, a turn of the century actor with the Sothern and Marlowe Shakespearean Troupe; Louis Nicholas, music critic for the Nashville Banner; Francis Craig, bandleader and composer of the classic "Near You"; musician Isabel Howell; and George W. Boswell's collection of Middle Tennessee folk songs.

Other Collections
Other noteworthy collections include historian Stanley Horn's collection of Andrew Jackson letters; the political cartoons of Tom Little and Charles Bissell; the World War II correspondence from the European and Pacific theaters of Joe and John Thompson; and the papers of early astronomer E. E. Barnard, famed sportswriter Grantland Rice, poet and literary critic Donald Davie, and William H. and Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, among others. Special Collections also houses the papers of faculty members dating from the beginning of the university, and the Robert A. McGaw Collection of early Tennessee maps.

Books | Manuscripts | University Archives | Photographs | University Memorabilia | Virtual Reading Room

The records of the university document the history of over 100 schools, departments, and programs. They include extensive records of the founding of the university in 1873 and its subsequent development. The archives also houses records of the University of Nashville and George Peabody College for Teachers, since 1979 a school of Vanderbilt University. The University Archives not only provides the history of the institution, but often are retrieved for administrative and scholarly use, in that they document efforts to develop higher education in the post-Civil War South. The archives are housed in a state-of-the-art facility two miles from campus. It offers twenty-four hour retrieval service.

The Photographic Collections consist of over 150,000 images, the subject of which is primarily the history of Vanderbilt University and George Peabody College. The collection also maintains the illustrations of several manuscript collections, particularly those of the Fugitives and Agrarians, Francis Robinson, and Delbert Mann.

Books | Manuscripts | University Archives | Photographs | University Memorabilia | Virtual Reading Room

The University Memorabilia Collection consists of three-dimensional artifacts relating to Vanderbilt University history.

Books | Manuscripts | University Archives | Photographs | University Memorabilia | Virtual Reading Room

The Virtual Reading Room complements the main Special Collections web page by providing easy online access to selected materials from our collections. The initial launch of the site contains information on the history of Vanderbilt University and George Peabody College; a digital version of our Southern Sociological Congress manuscript collection; a sampling of folk songs from the George Boswell Papers; photographs and short biographical sketches of members of the Fugitive and Agrarian literary groups; four subject guides to manuscript resources; and a selection of postcards depicting Vanderbilt University and George Peabody College.

Books | Manuscripts | University Archives | Photographs | University Memorabilia | Virtual Reading Room

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Last modified: April 10, 2008
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