Toni Morrison

Born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison has won the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for her writing. She was the second oldest of four children. Her father was a welder and her mother was a domestic worker. She credits them with instilling in her a love of reading, music, and folklore.

Morrison graduated high school with honors. She studied English and the Classics at Howard University, then graduate school at Cornell, where her thesis was on the works of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. After completing her Master’s she taught English at Texas Southern University and then Howard University where she met her husband, Harold. In 1961, she joined a writer’s group on campus and began working on her first novel, The Bluest Eye, 1970. The book received warm reviews but did not sell well.

She continued to explore the African American experience in different forms and time periods, bringing forth Sula in 1973, which was nominated for the American Book Award. Song of Solomon (1977) became the first work by an African American writer since Richard Wright to be a featured selection in the Book of the Month Club. In 1980, Morrison was appointed to the National Council of the Arts.

Her next book, Tar Baby, inspired by folktales, drew mixed reviews from critics, but it was her subsequent work that has proved to be one of her greatest masterpieces, Beloved (1987).

Morrison has gone on to write many more amazing books, including children’s literature with her son, Slade; the libretto for an opera; and several works of non-fiction.

Ms. Morrison has visited the University of Richmond more than once. The Galvin Rare Book Room has a first edition of her novel, Tar Baby, signed by the author.

More from the Collegian–100 years ago

SOUTHERN GALLANTS, HIST A MOMENT!

Listen, you chivalrous Southern gentleman. Suppose some man should speak uncivilly to your mother or sister—or, perhaps, curse her—what would you do? Would you twiddle your thumbs and be unmoved? Would you respect the fellow? Hardly. Firstly, you’d hunt him up, give him a straight left to the jaw, then, standing over him, you’d call him some names seldom seen in the “Who’s Who” or even in the lowest tribe’s genealogy. You admit that, of course. You admit that a man who speaks disrespectfully to a lady—yes, even to a woman, any woman—is hardly a gentleman. Don’t you?

The telephone in Dormitory 2, Richmond College, is on the same line with the Westhampton College ‘phone. The Richmond College boys pay as much, and no more, for their ‘phone as the girls across the lake. Well, two or three times, perhaps more, a girl has been talking over the ‘phone. A “gentleman” of Richmond College has then asked her, in beautifully-phrased sentences, to hang up, embellishing his request sometimes with the proverbial cuss-word. She was somebody’s sister. Now, if her brother were to seek out the “gentleman,” make him eat dirst, bite off his ear—could he be harshly criticized? Would this brother consider his sister’s “oathy” adviser a gentleman? Think about it. Gentlemen, this must cease. What a name our College will acquire if this continues. If we can’t talk decently over a telephone, let’s either remove the instrument or cut out our larynxes. It is hardly due to a filthy, corrupt mentality, but rather to not thinking. It is best to think what we do, always. The lock-up is full of men who “didn’t think.”

The Collegian, University of Richmond, No. 6, 22 January, 1915.

http://collegian.richmond.edu

Tucked away in the Galvin Rare Book Room is an unassuming book called “The Literary Souvenir, A Christmas and New Year’s Present.” [Galvin Rare Book Room PN6153.B8 1840] It is edited by William E. Burton who was an English actor, playwright, theater manager, and publisher, who relocated to the United States.

William E. Burton

Mr. Burton intended to study for the ministry, but his father’s death called him home to take over his father’s printing business. His attempt to establish a monthly magazine failed, but gained him contacts in the theater, and set his sights there.

He intended to be a great tragedian since he was of a darker, more saturnine nature. But on stage he was one of the funniest people of his time. He gained some fame as an actor and also as a writer, one of his plays actually playing in five different theaters at the same time.

At the age of 30 (1834) with a failed marriage behind him he decided to relocate to the United States where he continued to act and manage theaters in New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore. He established The Gentlemen’s Magazine in 1837, of which Edgar Allan Poe was the editor for some time. Though Burton disliked Poe’s harsh style of criticism, he gave him more and more responsibility. Nonetheless, the two quarreled and called each other names until Poe left the magazine.

Sometime in 1840, Mr. Burton published this Literary Souvenir with his own stories, and the

A Literary Souvenir.

works of others. It doesn’t have a Christmas or New Year’s story in it, but it is lavishly illustrated and bound with pages edged in gold. And on the flyleaf is an inscription which

Presented to Miss Catrine Williams as a New Years gift by a friend for A. D. 1840.

Richmond 1^st January.

With a new year we tend to look ahead, make promises and plans, and maybe wax a bit

Bridge across Westhampton Lake. (http://centuries.richmond.edu/items/show/291.)

nostalgic.. Along those lines, we’ve been taking a look back at what was happening at the University of Richmond 100 years ago in 1915. The campus was still pretty new, but according to the minutes of the Committee on New Buildings [Galvin Rare Book Room LD4711.R392 B], there were already problems.

It seems that the heating in the men’s dormitories was “defective” and architects Cram and Ferguson were being contacted. The company in charge of the heating system determined that it could not be remedied at present and the committee agreed to withhold payment. Heating and cooling issues on campus are nothing new!

Also, less than perfect was the main sewer line. Dr. Boatwright reported that the re-laying of the line was in progress.

A deal was struck with the Virginia Railway and Power Company (an early iteration of Dominion Power) to provide a minimum of 50 thousand watts for the first year and 100 thousand watts a year for the following four years. They were simpler times.

Also, the old mill road near the head of the lake had a bridge that spanned the water. (This is where the Commons now stands.) It was in need of repair. The committee could not decide whether to authorize the repairs or have “the road marked Dangerous or Closed.”

Other issues involved roads, buses/streetcars, and housing for professors.  Not too radically different from today’s worries except for the price tag.

Truman Capote, one of the leading American authors of the second half of the twentieth century, gave us such literary gems as Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood. He is also famous for his short fiction, published in the New Yorker and other magazines, and his collections of stories.

1956 copy in Rare Book Room.

One of those short pieces, A Christmas Memory, is told by an adult narrator about a Christmas when he was seven. He is living with an elderly cousin, and other people they are “not too much aware of.” It is late November and the woman declares it fruitcake weather. So she and the boy, Buddy, must go and gather pecans and buy moonshine whiskey. The woman makes these cakes every year and distributes them to friends she has met and those she hasn’t, like Franklin Roosevelt.

The story takes place in a town like Monroeville, Alabama, where Capote grew up with three elderly female cousins. And, like Buddy, he attended a military school up north. How much of this story actually happened has been fodder for many literary essays.

You can read this bittersweet story at Boatwright. But if you would like to read the presentation copy signed by the author, drop by the Galvin Rare Book Room.