Samuel Beckett Collection. The Beckett Collection is comprised of three major collections plus several smaller collections and individual items. The major collections are the Calvin and Joann Israel Collection, the Barney Rosset Collection and the Alan Schneider-Samuel Beckett Collection of Correspondence. The Israel Collection was acquired in 1991 and consists of more than 400 pieces, including published French and English editions of the Nobel Laureate's writings, almost all of which were inscribed by Beckett; manuscripts; typescripts; correspondence; a notebook; photographs; playbills and miscellanea. The books include a presentation copy of the 1929 first edition of Our Exagmination Round His Fortification for Incamination of Work in Progress, which contains Beckett's first published work, an essay in homage to Joyce entitled "Dante …Bruno. Vico..Joyce;" a 1930 signed, limited first edition copy of the poem Whoroscope, Beckett's first separately published work; and a dozen variant issues of Waiting for Godot, including a presentation, limited edition copy of the first edition (Paris, 1952). The manuscripts are equally impressive. They include a half dozen holograph manuscripts, twenty-five typescripts, including an original of the 1930 poem Whoroscope, and several versions of the play Compagnie (1979-80). The manuscripts also include a fifty-page soft-cover notebook containing what Beckett scholar Skip Ascheim believes to be the first draft of "Suite," later to be published as "La fin." The journal starts in English and ends in French, establishing that "Suite" was not originally written entirely in French as previously believed. This collection was quickly followed by two other major Beckett acquisitions, the Barney Rosset Collection, consisting mostly of business records and correspondence between Beckett and his North American literary agent and the publisher of Grove Press; and the thirty-year correspondence between Beckett and Alan Schneider, the director of every North American premier of a Beckett play and a number of world premieres. The latter collection includes more than three hundred Beckett letters discussing his work with Schneider plus more than two hundred copies of Schneider's letters. This lengthy correspondence forms a fascinating exchange between playwright and director. It serves as one of the best resources available for Beckett on Beckett. This exchange has been published in a book, No Author Better Served (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), edited by former Burns Library Visiting Scholar Maurice Harmon.
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill Collection. Ni Dhomhnaill (1952- ) is widely considered the finest contemporary poet writing in the Irish language. Her recent books include Cead Aighnis, Pharaoh's Daughter, and the Astrakhan Cloak. Her work has been translated by virtually every major contemporary Irish poet, opening it up to a wide and appreciative audience. The Collection includes manuscripts, poetical notebooks and notebooks on Irish folklore from which her poems have evolved, correspondence, and miscellanea. Arrangements provide for the periodic deposit of all new material, forming one of the most complete and comprehensive collections anywhere of a major Irish writer.
