Finding Aid to the Robert Tracy Papers
Bancroft Accessioning and Processing Staff
The Bancroft Library
2023
The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-6000
bancref@library.berkeley.edu
Contributing Institution:
The Bancroft Library
Title: Robert Tracy papers
Creator:
Tracy, Robert, 1928-2020
Identifier/Call Number: BANC MSS 2016/196
Physical Description:
24 linear feet
(19 cartons, 1 box, 1 oversize folder)
Date (inclusive): approximately 1950-2015
Language of Material:
English
.
Conditions Governing Access
Collection is open to researchers.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The Robert Tracy papers were purchased from Rebecca Tracy in 2022.
Arrangement
Materials are arranged as they were at the point of acquisition, with the exception of the Seamus Heaney correspondence and
signed poems, which were segretated in their own box for easier access and discoverability. No attempt was made to rearrange
the collection into clear series. There is no discernable series of correspondence in the collection. The correpondence that
exists is scattered throughout the containers.
Biographical / Historical
Robert Tracy served on the faculty of the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley from 1960 until his
retirement in 1993. Tracy was a prominent scholar of British and Irish literature and one of a group of noted Irish Studies
scholars at UC Berkeley that included Thomas Flanagan, Thomas Parkinson, Dan Melia, and Brenan O'Hehir and was one of the
founders of the Celtic Studies Program. Tracy also helped to found the Western chapter of the American Conference for Irish
Studies.
Tracy's areas of scholarly interest included the work of Anthony Trollope and Charles Dickens. He produced important editions
of some of Trollope's works as well as works of Sheridan Le Fanu and Flann O'Brien. Tracy also produced and translation of
the Russian Jewish writer Osip Mandelstaum's first collection of poems. Many of Tracy's writings appear in his book
The Unappeasable Host: Studies in Irish Identities, published in 1998.
Robert and his wife Rebecca Garrison Tracy be-friended many Irish writers who visited Berkeley over the years, including poet
Seamus Heaney, who came to Berkeley to teach in 1970-1971. They remained friends until the end of Heaney's life in 2013.
Preferred Citation
Robert Tracy papers, BANC MSS 2016/196, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Processing Information
Minimally processed at Level 2 by Bancroft Accessioning and Processing staff in 2023. Collections that receive Level 2 processing
processing are provided with a collection-level description and a simple box-level container listing. For this collection,
the simple container listing was, for some containers, enhanced by a content note. The arrangement of the collection generally
remains as it was at the point of acquisition. An exception was made for the Seamus Heaney correspondence and signed poems,
which were segretated in their own box for easier access and discoverability. Some materials in the collection remain in original
folders. Other materials have been refoldered with original folder titles copied by Bancroft staff. Titles were created by
the archivists only when folder titles were lacking.
Content Description
Collection consists of teaching, research, and other professional materials created by Robert Tracy, faculty member in the
English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Materials consist of drafts of Tracy's articles and books, including
materials relating to anthologies; research files on various topics in 19th and 20th century Irish and English literature;
conference materials; course materials from courses taught at UC Berkeley as well as courses taught at other institutions.
Also included in the collection are letters and holiday cards received from Irish poet Seamus Heaney and his wife Marie Heaney,
as well are three signed poems, January God, A Drink of Water, and The Tollund Man (which is handwritten.
Conditions Governing Use
Some materials in these collections may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). In addition, the reproduction
of some materials may be restricted by terms of University of California gift or purchase agreements, donor restrictions,
privacy and publicity rights, licensing and trademarks. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond
that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be
commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.
For additional information about the University of California, Berkeley Library's permissions policy please see: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/permissions-policies
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Heaney, Seamus, 1939-2013
Tracy, Robert, 1928-2020 -- Archives
Heaney, Marie
University of California, Berkeley -- Faculty
University of California, Berkeley. Department of English
English literature -- Study and teaching (Higher)
College teachers -- California -- Berkeley.
Authors, Irish -- 20th century
carton 1
Course materials, English Department materials, People's Park clippings
approximately 1950-1995
carton 2
Research and writing, B-M
approximately 1950-1996
Scope and Contents
Mostly Tracy's work on Irish literature, including materials on Brian Friel, Bram Stoker, and Brian Moore.
carton 3
Research and writing, M-Z
approximately 1950-1997
Scope and Contents
Mostly Tracy's work on Irish literature, including materials on Paul Muldoon, Flann O'Brien, Julia O'Faolain, Colm Toibin,
William Trevor, and William Butler Yeats.
carton 4
Robert Tracy materials on Seamus Heaney
approximately 1970-2015
Scope and Contents
Research materials, press, drafts relating to Tracy's work on Heaney.
box 1
Seamus and Marie Heaney correspondence and signed poems
1980-2015
Scope and Contents
Letters/cards from Seamus Heaney and Marie Heaney as well as three signed poems, January God, A Drink of Water, and The Tollund
Man (which is handwritten).
carton 5
Research and writing
approximately 1950-2013
Scope and Contents
Manuscripts, research materials, etc., including files on the Bachall Isa, Artaud, Cuchulain, James Joyce, St. Patrick, Imrama
(Irish odysseys), Ces Noínden Ulad, 2007 Celtic Colloquium, George Petrie, Tain Prophets, Tristia.
carton 6
Research and writing
approximately 1950-2013
Scope and Contents
Manuscripts, research materials, etc., including files on Tristia, Osip Mendelstam, Gaelic origins, Charles Vallencey, Celticism.
carton 7
Research and writing
approximately 1950-2013
Scope and Contents
Manuscripts, research materials, etc., including files on William Butler Yeats, Anthony Trollope, and Anton Chekhov, and Clontarf,
Ireland.
carton 8
Research notebooks, genealogy
approximately 1950-2013
carton 9
Research notes and typescript drafts
approximately 1950-2013
Scope and Contents
Drafts include works on Dickens, modern Irish writers, anthology of 18th- and 19th- century poetry (Romantic poets), and other
topics.
carton 10
Research notes and typescript drafts
approximately 1950-2013
Scope and Contents
Drafts include anthology of 18th- and 19th- century poetry (Romantic poets) (continued), materials on some Irish Studies events,
a file on Lenny Bruce, reviews of Unappeasable Host, typescript of Artful Voyeurs: Writing Ireland, 1960-1985. Also included
is an unpublished typescript draft of Joan Trodden Keefe's Churchyard Clay.
carton 11
Assorted typescripts and other materials (many unidentified)
approximately 1950-2013
carton 12
Charles Dickens and other Victorian literature research, course, and conference materials (including some correspondence)
approximately 1950-2013
carton 13
Charles Dickens and other Victorian literature research, course, and conference materials (including some correspondence)
approximately 1950-2013
carton 14
Course materials
approximately 1950-2013
Scope and Contents
Mostly course materials; some materials from Fromm Institute courses.
carton 15
Drafts, professional papers, UC materials, personal papers
approximately 1950-2013
Scope and Contents
Miscellaneous drafts, Irish topics, conference talks, correspondence, theater collection, resume, materials relating to Tracy's
Irish citizenship, genealogy.
carton 16
Drafts of articles, notebooks
approximately 1950-2013
Scope and Contents
Research and writing; articles and papers (some unpublished) on Julia O'Faolain, William Trevor, Brian Moore, and others;
Tracy's childhood and college notebooks (from Boston College and Harvard notebooks); some materials on Chekhov.
carton 17
Notebooks and other materials
approximately 1950-2013
Scope and Contents
College and UC Berkeley notebooks, a small amount of correspondence, materials regarding Harvard Summer School's 1950 Conference
on The Defense of Poetry.
carton 18
Binders of essays, possibly for anthologies
approximately 1950-2013
Scope and Contents
Binder 1-2 (two copies): written essays on the World War I poets, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and Edwin Muir.
Binder 3: written essays on Victorian literature, Thomas Babington Macaulay, John Henry Newman, William Barnes, John Stuart
Mill, Alfred Tennyson. Binder 4-5: written essays (2 copies) on 20th century poetry, William Butler Years, John Millington
Synge, E.M. Forster. Binder 6: written essays on street ballads, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, George Meredith, Lewis Carroll,
James Thomson, William Morris, Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Walter Pater, Thomas Hardy. Binder
7: typescript on Chekhov.
carton 19
Binders of essays, possibly for anthologies
approximately 1950-2013
Scope and Contents
Binder 8: written essays on T.S. Eliot, Robert Graves, and W.H. Auden. Binder 9: written essays on Edward Fitzgerald, Robert
Browning, John Ruskin, Arthur Hugh Clough, Matthew Arnold, and Coventry Patmore. Binder 10: written essays on Gerard Manley
Hopkins, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, A.E. Housman, Rudyard Kipling, Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, and Max Beerbohm. Binder
11: written essays on Louis MacNeice, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Alan Sillitoe, and Ted Hughes. Binder 12: written essays
on Hugh MacDiarmid, Basil Bunting, Patrick Kavanagh, F.T. Prince, Thomas Blackburn, Herbert Lomas, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Bernard
Kops, Edwin Brock, Charles Tomlinson, Nathaniel Tarn, Gael Turnbull, Thom Gunn, John Montague, Roy Fisher, Jon Silkin, Geoffrey
Hill, Adrian Henri, Adrian Mitchell, Dom Moraes, Seamus Heaney, and Pete Brown.
oversize_folder 1B
Posters and broadsides
approximately 1950-2013
Scope and Contents
Relating to Seamus Heaney as well as UC Berkeley events (English Department and general).
