Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Guide to the Papers concerning proposed anthology of western poetry, 1905-1908
BANC MSS C-H 111
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Collection Title: Papers Concerning Proposed Anthology of Western Poetry,
Date (inclusive): 1905-1908
Collection Number: BANC MSS C-H 111
Creator: Nye, Alfred Bourne, 1853-1913
Extent:
Number of containers: 2 boxes
Repository: The
Bancroft Library
Berkeley, California 94720-6000
Physical Location: For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
Languages Represented:
English
Collection is open for research.
Copyright has not been assigned to The Bancroft Library. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts
must be submitted in writing to the Head of Public Services. Permission for publication is given on behalf of The Bancroft
Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which
must also be obtained by the reader.
[Identification of item], Papers concerning proposed anthology of western poetry, BANC MSS C-H 111, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley.
In 1905, Alfred B. Nye, who was at the time private secretary to the governor of California, began collecting poems by California
and other Pacific Coast writers, with the intention of publishing a volume of the selections and brief biographies of the
authors. Accordingly, he wrote the authors, asking permission to publish certain poems and requesting biographical data. The
response was generally very favorable, the authors granting the request and often suggesting the poems they regarded as their
best. After the San Francisco earthquake and fire, Nye was compelled to abandon work on the project for many months. In November
1906 he was appointed state controller and found the work so time consuming that there was none to devote to his literary
pursuits. To one of the sympathetic poets he wrote:
Moreover, I am wondering whether the good people of the State would not regard it as evidence of dangerous unsoundness if
their head bookkeeper (which is what the State Controller is) should be announced as the publisher of a compilation of poetry?
He apparently never completed the project.
These papers, which consist of copies of Nye's letters, the replies he received from the various authors, and copies of the
poems selected for inclusion in the anthology, came to the Bancroft Library in September 1959 as the gift of Robert A. Waring.