Poetry
- May Sarton (1912-1995) was a poet and novelist who lived in Nelson, NH and York, ME. The May Sarton Collection contains several manuscript poems and 11 folders of letters to friends and admirers.
- Celia Thaxter, 1835-1894, one of the most popular American poets of the late nineteeth century, lived on Appledore Island among the Isles of Shoals off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire. Eleven holograph letters from Thaxter, 2 photographs of Celia, and poems "Wilheling", "Love Shall Save Us All…
- Donald Morison Murray (1924-2006) was a Pulitzer Prize winnning journalist, writing teacher, and newspaper columnist. He was a veteran of WWII, professor of the University of New Hampshire, and husband of Minnie Mae (Emmerich) Murray (1920-2005).…
- Special CollectionsRaymond Charles Swain (1912-1982) and his wife Virginia Anne Addis (dates unknown) were writers and amature poets from New Hampshire and Florida. One folder contains the poetry of Virginia Ann (Addis) Swain. The rest of the collection consists of…
- Special CollectionsJane Kenyon (1947-1995) was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1972 she married Donald Hall, whom she had met while a student at the University of Michigan. In 1975, the couple moved to Eagle Pond Farm in Wilmot, New Hampshire. Here they lived and worked…
- Special CollectionsEleanor Wells wrote poetry and articles that she submitted for publication in various magazines. The Eleanor Wells Nudd papers contain correspondence and manuscripts.
- Special CollectionsJack (Jean-Louis Lebris de) Kerouac (1922-1969), American novelist and memoirist, was born and grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts. He was a leading writer of the Beat Generation, and his second novel "On the Road" (1957) was the defacto manifesto of the movement. The…
- University ArchivesLucie Jones Harris graduated from the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts in the class of 1920. Driftwood is a self-published book of poems (many are limericks), the proceeds of which went to charity.
- Special CollectionsEliphalet Smith (1759-1836) was born in Newmarket, N.H., married Ann Bryant, and later became a successful merchant in Portland, Maine. A 20pp. manuscript containing satirical poems, copies of letters and articles written for local newspapers, and a copy of an erudite letter on the human character.
- Special CollectionsCarlton and Margaret (1928-2011) Bradford owned and operated the Kearsarge Bookshelf and Bradford Hallmark in New London, NH for 27 years. They began corresponding with Donald Hall when hosting a poetry reading for him in their store. Margaret died in…
- Special CollectionsThe High School Underground Newspaper Collection includes the first ten issues of what was initially called The Concord Union Leader (from January-December 1969, issues 1-6), and then The Bane (issues 7-10, February-May 1970) produced by students at Concord High School, St. Paul’s, and Bishop Brady…
- Special CollectionsThomas Bailey Aldrich was a New Hampshire-born author, poet and editor. Hist most noteable works are The Story of a Bad Boy and An Old Town By The Sea. Two letters written by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. One letter describes some of his works in progress; the other, written from the office of the…
- Special CollectionsThomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) was a New Hampshire-born author, poet and editor. His most noteable works are The Story of a Bad Boy and An Old Town By The Sea. Letter written by Thomas Bailey Aldrich in 1904 to Reverend John M. Milson that promises him a copy of the poem “Two Moods.” Included is…
- Special CollectionsThe Robert Frost Youth Poet Program was begun in 1997 to provide New Hampshire fourth grade students in public and private schools the opportunity to express their feelings about New Hampshire in a poem in the hope that it will increase appreciation…
- Special CollectionsWillis Boyd Allen was born at Kittery Point, Me., July 9, 1855, attended Boston Latin School, and graduated from Harvard in 1878 and from Boston University Law School with an LL.B. degree in 1881. After practicing law for a short period he retired in…
- Special CollectionsNonny Hogrogian started her career as a designer of children’s books but soon began illustrating and writing. She twice won the Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished picture book for children, in 1966 for Always Room For One More and in 1972 for…
- Special CollectionsGalway Kinnell (1927-2014)was born in Providence, Rhode Island and attended Princeton University. After graduation he taught in France, Australia, and Iran, as well as the United States, and was poet-in- residence at several colleges and universities…
- Special CollectionsDonald Hall was born in 1928 in Hamden, Connecticut, and attended Phillips Exeter, Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford Universities. He taught for 19 years at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor before moving in 1975 to the family farm on Eagle Pond in…
- Special CollectionsCharles Simic was born on May 9, 1938, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, moving to the United States in 1953. His first full-length collection of poems, What the Grass Says, was published in 1962. Since then he has published more than sixty books in the U.S.…
- Special CollectionsJean Pedrick Kefferstan (1922-2006),was born in Salem, Massachusetts. She was a poet, co-founder of the Alice James Poetry Cooperative (later Alice James Books), and founder of Skimmilk Farm summer poetry workshops in Brentwood, NH. Pedrick published…
- Special CollectionsSix broadsides: "Rembrandt’s Last Self Portrait" (poem by Charles E. Wadsworth; wood engraving by Lance Hidy; "The Beautiful Young Devon Shorthorn Bull. Sexton Hyades 33rd" (by Leslie Norris; lino-cut by Charles E. Wadsworth; "On Chick-A-Dee Mis-…
- Special CollectionsEdward Morgan Lewis served as president of the University of New Hampshire from September 1, 1927 to May 24, 1936. Lewis received both his undergraduate and graduate education from Williams College. He came to UNH from Massachusetts Agricultural…
- Special CollectionsRobert Frost (1874-1963) was a distinguished American poet and winner of four Pulitzer Prizes, born in San Francisco. He moved to New England in 1885, where he attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University. In 1895 he married Elinor Miriam White.…
- Special CollectionsLesley Frost Ballantine was the second child of Robert and Elinor Frost. She served as the first chairman of the Robert Frost Foundation and oversaw the restoration of the Frost farm in Derry, New Hampshire. The Lesley Frost Ballantine Collection is organized in…
- Special CollectionsAuthor, poet, and composer. Personal letter to Edmund in Jaffrey, NH on Aug. 16, 1918 in which Aiken mentions the delayed delivery of “papers for T.C.R.” and a review of The Jig of Forshlin.
- Special CollectionsBetsey Kaime lived at Canterbury Shaker Village. A 120 page leather-bound book filled with occasional poems written over a period of two years (August 1846-October 1848) at Canterbury Shaker Village.
- Special CollectionsAmerican poet, New Hampshire resident and teacher Two-page letter and accompanying poem, “Forest Flowers,” from Robert Frost to Miss Myrtle Raitt at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire, where Frost had previously taught. There is also a fourteen-page typed transcription of an untitled essay…
- Special CollectionsSusan Wilbur Jones, wife of Llewellyn Jones, a former literary editor of the Chicago Evening Post and later editor of the Christian Register, a magazine associated with the Unitarian Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, took short-story writing courses from May Sarton at Radcliffe College. The…
- Special CollectionsShaker of Enfield, N.H., musician, and poet. Composer of the popular Shaker song "Millenial Praise". Music book kept by James Russell of Enfield, N.H. The first 56 pages of the book contain a 12 section lesson on the principles of music. Pages 58-145 contain hymns and poems Russell wrote for the…
- Special CollectionsN.H. printer and poet. Three page letter from Bela Chapin, Claremont, N.H. to George Wadleigh in which Chapin, the compiler of The Poets of New Hampshire, inquires about the life histories of several N.H. poets. He asks Wadleigh about Jeremy Belknap’s hymns, mentions his contact with Thomas Bailey…
- Special CollectionsAuthor and poet who was born in Henniker, N.H. and wrote "Mountain Maid and other Poems of New Hampshire" A letter sent from Framingham, MA to Amos R. Wells in which Proctor expresses appreciation for Wells’ work in the Authors Club and promises to attend the Club’s meeting whenever she is in…
- Special CollectionsPoet, professor of Literature and Modern Poetry at Tufts University for 28 years. Two letters written by Holmes. The first is addressed as an open letter to the Folio 1943 and describes Holmes’ passion for writing and the work of Carroll Towle and the…
- Special CollectionsAmerican Poet, whose most famous poem was "The Man With The Hoe" which highlighted laborer's hardships. Two broadsides inscribed in 1929 by Edwin Markham to the Book and Scroll Club of U.N.H.: “Lincoln, the Man of the People” – a poem read at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922 – and “…
- Special CollectionsPoet and author buried in the Stark Cemetery, Dunbarton, NH. A Postcard sent by Robert Lowell [1964-1977] to Arnold Grade, State University of N.Y. at Brockport. Lowell states that he was “never a student of Robert Frost’s, except in times of conversation.”
- Special CollectionsPoet and novelist who lived in Warner, New Hampshire. Four letters between Maxine Kumin and William B. Ewert in 1973 that document the publication of Kumin’s poem “On Digging Out Old Lilacs” in the Friends of the University of New Hampshire Library Newsletter (Dec. 1973). Also included is a…
- Special CollectionsLouis V. Ledoux, author and poet, was born in New York City in 1880. He wrote several books of poetry and prose and was a recognized authority on Japanese prints. Ledoux died in New York in 1948. Letter written Jan. 27, 1911 by Louis Ledoux which both…
- Special CollectionsArchibald MacLeish (1892-1982) was an American poet, writer and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work. Two letters written in 1970 by Archibald MacLeish from…
- Special CollectionsFrederic Ogden Nash, 1902-1971 was an American Poet well known for his humorous poetry. He was born in Rye, N.Y. and lived most of his life in Baltimore but he spent summers with his family in a house at Little Boar's Head in North Hampton, N.H. and is buried in the town's East Side Cemetery. Three…
- Special CollectionsW.S. Braithwaite (1878-1962) was a writer, poet and literary critic. From 1906 to 1931 he contributed to The Boston Evening Transcript, eventually becoming its literary editor. He also wrote articles, reviews and poetry for many other periodicals and journals, including Atlantic Monthly, the New…
- Special CollectionsAmy Lowell (1874-1925) was a poet, biographer, and essayist who owned a summer home in Dublin, N.H. near the MacDowell Artist's Colony. One page letter (1917) written by Amy Lowell to poet and editor, William Stanley Braithwaite. Lowell describes her lecturing and speaking engagements in N.Y. City…
- Special CollectionsEdwin Francis Edgett (1867-1946) was an author, literary editor of the Boston Evening Transcript and a journalist. Thirteen letters (1918-1934) and published materials sent to Edwin Francis Edgett from various N.H. authors and educators, including Charles Townsend Copeland, Bertha…
- Special CollectionsJohn Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892) was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States A four page letter to Sarah Orne Jewett, London, England, July 3, 1882 in which Whittier expresses delight at the fact that…
- Special CollectionsE. E. Cummings, 1894-1962, Harvard-educated poet, prose writer, and critic. Seventeen signed letters and postcards from E. E. Cummings, mostly to Seymour Lawrence of the Atlantic Monthly Press. All of the letters and most of the postcards are…
- Special CollectionsHenry Augustus Shute (1856-1943) was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy (1875) and Harvard University (1879). He was born and lived in Exeter, New Hampshire, where he worked as a lawyer and a judge of the municipal court. In 1902 his publication of…
- Special CollectionsEdwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), American poet, was born in Head Tide, Maine. He attended Harvard University without taking a degree and later moved to New York. He gained national recognition when President Theodore Roosevelt reviewed the second…
- Special CollectionsMekeel McBride (1950-) is a writer who studied under Samuel Yellen, as well as going on to teach at Harvard, Princeton, Wheaton, and UNH (1979-present). Her books include A Change in the Weather (Chowder Chapbooks, 1979), No Ordinary World (1979), The…
- Special CollectionsSarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909), author and poet, was born and lived in South Berwick, Maine. Her best known works are The Country of the Pointed Firs and the short story “A White Heron”. Her first novel was Deephaven. The Sarah Orne Jewett Collection contains 9 letters written by Jewett from 1880-…
- Special CollectionsPoet Robert Huff (1924-1993) was educated at Wayne State University, Michigan. Huff’s first book of poetry, Colonel Johnson’s Ride, was published in 1959. Three others followed: The Course (1966); The Ventriloquist (1977), and Shore Guide to Flocking…
- Special CollectionsWilliam Helmuth Heyen was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1940 and was educated at SUNY Brockport and Ohio University. He taught American literature and creative writing at SUNY Brockport for over thirty years before his retirement in 2000. Ewert…
- Special CollectionsRobert P. Tristram Coffin (1892-1955) grew up in Brunswick, Maine on a “saltwater farm.” He attended Bowdoin, Princeton, and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar before, as well as after, serving two years in World War I. He taught at…
