Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

Correspondence, manuscripts, notes, course materials, and printed matter relevant to the teaching and research of Elliott V. K. Dobbie, Professor of English. Correspondence files contain materials on various publications including American Speech, Modern American Usage, Word as well as letters with students and colleagues. The manuscripts include Columbia University English Department files, course materials on the history of the English language, examinations, lectures given by others and notes thereon; texts of sagas, materials on Short History of English Grammar and West Frisian language. The notes are primarily on Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. Printed matter includes numerous offprints inscribed to Dobbie and materials used in his research.

Letters from 27 English and American poets answering a request from Wallace L. Anderson, then a graduate student at the University of Chicago writing his dissertation, for opinions and assessments of the poet William Vaughn Moody. Some of the responses are simply pleas of insufficient time or knowledge to give adequate answers, but others are considered assessments or strongly expressed opinions. The respondents giving substantive answers were William Rose Benet, John Ciardi, John Gould Fletcher, John Holmes, Robert Lovett, Edgar Lee Masters, Muriel Rukeyser, George Santayana, Ferdinand Schevill, Karl Shapiro, Wallace Stevens, Allen Tate, Lawrence Thompson, Louis Untermeyer, and William Carlos Williams.