News from the DeGolyer Library April 2023

Founded in 1970, The Crew of the Barque Lone Star is one of the oldest active Sherlock Holmes societies in the world. If you’d like to investigate the world of Holmes and the writing of Arthur Conan Doyle, join the Crew and the DeGolyer Library May 26th and May 27th, when they’ll be gathering for Lone Star Holmes: A look at Sherlock Holmes past, present and future at SMU.

Click the button below to learn more about the conference and program, which includes a special preview of our newest exhibit: ‘I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere’: Collecting the Multilingual Cannon.

Students and student journalists at The Daily Campus dug into the SMU Archives to examine the racist practices and traditions that shaped the early history of SMU, and how the legacy of this history impacts the university today, in ways that are not widely known or acknowledged. The article also explores how the work of examining and documenting this part of university history is often left to students of color, and urges the university to take on the work of examining and confronting this history.

Click here to read ‘SMU Archives Reveal Painful Past’

Remembering John Rowe, Texas Collector

All of us at the DeGolyer Library were saddened to learn of the recent death of John N. Rowe III (1936-2023). A great benefactor of the DeGolyer, John Rowe was one of the leading numismatists in the United States. His knowledge of rare coins and paper money was unsurpassed. A Dallas native and SMU alumnus, he founded Southwest Numismatics, a company housed most recently in Expressway Tower on the SMU East Campus. John’s office window gave him a broad perspective on our academic operations, all of which, he believed, hinged upon library resources.

As a teenager, John began buying, selling, and collecting, a pursuit he followed with great passion his entire life. With his brother-in-law and business partner B.B. Barr, John put together what is without question the greatest collection of obsolete Texas bank notes from the colonial period to the 1930s, numbering in the thousands. They donated the currency collection to SMU in 2003, along with rare maps, books, pamphlets, and manuscripts. To learn more and to search and browse the currency collection online, see

https://www.smu.edu/libraries/digitalcollections/tbn.

After 2003, John made additional annual gifts to the DeGolyer, numbering over 2,000 books, manuscripts, documents, periodicals, and auction catalogs. He also encouraged others to consider donating their collections to the DeGolyer Library, including major donors George Cook and Elmer Powell. As we extend our condolences to John’s wife, Pat, and his family, we also are grateful for his many gifts and steadfast support over the years. We will miss his friendship, but we are honored to preserve the many legacies he leaves us.

The DeGolyer Library’s current exhibit covers several centuries of English and American poetry, with an emphasis on literary biography based upon the poets. Over 200 volumes are on display, featuring both the well-known (Shakespeare, Wordsworth) and the more obscure (Janet Little, Ann Yearsley). DeGolyer Library has a wide-ranging literary collection and we hope the current exhibit will encourage English majors and graduate students to pursue research projects with our materials. We also designed the exhibit to coincide with the release of Willard Spiegelman’s new book, Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt.

Spiegelman, Professor of English emeritus at SMU, returned to Dallas and the Library on March 23 to give a talk on his subject. Clampitt herself is well represented in the show, and much of her work embodies the retrospective approach we’ve followed. For example, her Predecessors, Et cetera: Essays (1991) is paired with Thomas Fuller’s History of the Worthies of England (1662), the first book to include a biographical notice of Shakespeare. For lovers of poetry, and lovers of biography, “Lives of the Poets” offers many worthy examples.

‘I hear of Sherlock Everywhere’: Collecting the Multilingual Cannon

Opening May 26th

The enduring appeal of fiction’s greatest detective is explored through selections from DeGolyer Library’s Donald J. Hobbs Collection, which contains more than 8,000 volumes and translations of the Sherlock Holmes canon in 108 languages.