Popular Literature

The Spencer Library's popular literature collections were strengthened by the purchase in 1987 of the Kevin Carpenter collection of some 550 titles of British dime novels and penny-part novels, along with single issues and runs of thirty-five similar periodicals. The collector is a member of the Faculty of English at the University of Oldenburg and both curator and author of the catalogue of a major exhibition of penny dreadfuls from the Oldenburg collection shown in London in 1983.

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The Children's Collection is not a selective collection of great children's literature but deliberately inclusive, attempting to provide a cross-section of what was available for children to read. Built almost totally by gift, this strong collection of over 8,000 children's and young people's books, mainly American and English 19th and early 20th century, includes enlightening works to be read at home after school with examples of piety to rival the mediaeval saints offered as models of conduct— one poor early 19th century child lived a life of sin and expired in affecting repentance at the tender age of four —as well as more entertaining fare such as E. Nesbit's unsurpassable fancies, Tom Swift's scientific adventures, and the exploits of Nancy Drew, girl detective.

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In 1965 the Library received by bequest the library of James H. Stewart, one of the founding members of the Wichita Bibliophiles, who was particularly interested in fantasy fiction. The Stewart Collection includes most of the novels and short stories of Arthur Machen and a fine run of the fantasy magazine Weird Tales as well as a valuable collection of bibliography and modern fine printing.

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Founded in 1969, with the first installment of an annual gift from an alumnus, Larry Friesen, for the purchase of science-fiction paperbacks, the Department's collection of science fiction is its most active popular literature collection. James E. Gunn, emeritus professor of English and founder of the KU Center for the Study of Science Fiction, has not only supported the collection by generous gifts of books and periodicals and the deposit of his own papers but has persuaded others to support it as well. Through his efforts the library became a North American repository for World SF (the organization of overseas science fiction writers and publishers, which has presented us with science fiction from Europe, Latin America, Israel, and the Far East), the official repository for the archives of the Science Fiction Research Association, and one of the recipients of new science fiction books from the Science Fiction Writers of America.

H. Beam Piper, whose popularity remains almost undiminished thirty years after his death, committed suicide in November 1964. His long-time agent, Kenneth S. White, to whom Piper dedicated Little Fuzzy, had died suddenly, carrying his business records, which he had kept in his memory only, into death with him. Piper was left destitute—he had been reduced to shooting pigeons from his window to supplement his diet—and depressed from the rejection of a third Fuzzy novel, unaware that White had recently sold some of his work, and convinced that his writing career was over.

Piper's estate was left in such confusion that his works were allowed to go out of print. Their appeal to science fiction readers and collectors remained, however, so strong that, from early 1965 until 1976 when Ace Books finally acquired copyright and began publication, the few copies which could be found brought as much as 100 times the original cover price.

Built almost entirely by gifts (both materials and funds), the collection has grown very rapidly, developing remarkable strength in science fiction periodicals dating from the 1920's to the mid-50s— derived largely from the collections of James Gunn, John Ryley, Ben Jason, and P. Schuyler Miller, long-time book review editor for Astounding. Lloyd Currey has contributed many books, Richard DeLap left us his library, and local collectors make frequent gifts of paperbacks and magazines.

The Department's largest groups of science fiction manuscripts are the entire surviving science fiction archives of Cordwainer Smith, and the papers of James Gunn and Lloyd Biggle. Biggle has not only deposited his own science fiction archives in the library but arranged for the gift of literary manuscripts of T.L. Sherred and J. Hunter Holly, and brought us several hundred oral history tapes from the Science Fiction Oral History Association. Lee Killough has made us her official archival repository and many other authors, including Theodore Sturgeon and Thomas A. Easton, have committed papers to the Spencer Library.