USU library digitizes world’s second-largest Jack London collection

Deep in the bowels of the Merrill-Cazier library, hidden among shelves of priceless documents and manuscripts, reside 45 boxes containing the second largest collection of Jack London material in the world, part of which will be available digitally by the end of October.

“It’s a really heavily used collection, and it’s one of our more prestigious collections,” said Clint Pumphrey, manuscript curator of the special collections and archives.

Second only to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, most of the Merrill-Cazier collection can only be found at USU, Pumphrey said. This resulted in scholars all over the world asking for copies of some of the materials.

“That’s why we decided that it would be a good candidate for a digital collection,” Pumphrey said.

English professor Paul Crumbley agreed.

“Having an archive like this available to show classes increases the ways we can expose students to literature,” Crumbly said. “For some students, it really brings authors to life.”

Pumphrey has been working on digitizing the Jack London exhibit held two years ago in the library atrium. Originally limited on space, the exhibit on London’s life, family, politics and adventures will expand to include more documents online.

“It’s mainly things that were related to that original exhibit that we did in the library atrium,” he said. “Those items and items that are related but we didn’t necessarily use for that exhibit.”

The collections came to USU’s library through a mixture of donation and purchase. Most of the manuscript materials, letters and diaries were donated by Irving Shepard, the executive of the London Literary Estate and London’s nephew, who had good relations with King Hendricks, a former USU professor who researched London.

“The university did purchase a complete set of Jack London’s novels that are signed by Jack London to his wife, Charmian,” Pumphrey said.

One of the digital exhibit sections includes scans of the original covers and the letters written in the beginning of each book from the library’s set of first-edition copies.

“He had a very unique way of signing it,” said Liz Woolcott, Merrill-Cazier digital discovery librarian. “He would always address her as ‘mate-woman,’ or ‘my woman’ or ‘mate.’ We have a complete list somewhere about the different ways he addressed. And then he would sign it similar to that, so ‘your lover’ or ‘your mate.'”

London also inserted photos in the beginning of each book.

“He just put random pictures in there,” Pumphrey said. “It didn’t always have anything to do with what was in the book.”

Another featured item in the collection is the tramp diary London wrote as a young man traveling across the county. The document will be available in the digital collection as a scan of the original or typed transcription.

“It gives you a little glimpse of the romance and adventure an 18-year-old man was attracted to,” Crumbley said.

Crumbley, along with Pumphrey and Brad Cole, the department head of the Special Collections and Archives, will be hosting a panel on the tramp diary later this month at the Jack London Symposium in Berkley, California.

The exhibit also includes letters of correspondence between London and Sinclair Lewis about plot line ideas. According to Woolcott, London bought plot ideas from Lewis before he was a well-known writer himself.

“He would write notations on [the correspondences], as he’s looking through the plot line, and his thoughts — if this was good or bad or if this would work, if this was far out,” Woolcott said. “It would be typed up by idea, the story title possibility, then he would write notations about it.”

Other exhibit subjects include London’s experience in the Russo-Japanese War, his correspondence with close friend Anna Strunsky and three of his wills from the 1906, 1909 and 1911.

“You can kind of see the progression of his relationships with other people in his wills,” Woolcott said. “In the first one, he was leaving it all to his ex-wife, his mom and his current wife; he was trying to be equal among them. And then in the last one, he pretty much leaves it all to his current wife and cuts everybody else out.”

Some of the documents in the online exhibit can already be located in the digital library research collections, but the entire exhibit won’t be available online until later this month, Woolcott said.

— lormialor@gmail.com