Recent on-campus searching has yielded an exciting and highly unusual find in the Teaching Fellows lounge. Scattered among the shelves were perhaps 10-12 books inscribed by Professor Richard B. Sewall, a highly respected literary figure at Yale who passed away in 2003 at 95 years old.
These books all have his name, date, and accompanying notes stenciled in the margins. The archiver has chosen 4 of those 10-12 books for their thematic coherence to the Archive's purpose in categorizing poetry. Initial observations suggest, with great hesitation, that these books belonged in Professor Sewall's private teaching collection. The front interior page has his name, a date, and a list of page numbers and titles. (ex, R .B Sewall, 1957, IV. 'XXX') One of the texts selected, a 1932 copy of Wordsworth's poetry, is inscribed as 'Stephen Sewall' in a similar pattern of listing pages and sections in the top corner. It is unclear if there is a familial connection, or else a coincidence.
These margin notes are especially valuable because one of the books inscriptions indicates that it was a classroom copy, by which we mean it is a book the Professor would have brought into a classroom to teach from or else study from given the page numbers and titles lead to individual poems in the books. This statement is given with reasonable confidence, and will be thoroughly examined and interrogated or else retracted with apology. In one of the books the Professor used an entire folded up newspaper as a bookmark, which presents its own fascinating look into the context with which Sewall was teaching Robert Frost's poetry (to give a specific, documented example from the books in the special collection.)
Many of the Sewall books in the lounge are on literary theory and are in remarkably poor condition, one of particular note being from 1933 and falling apart at a rapid pace. Time will be taken to build out this section in accordance with the significance of this discovery with additional photos of margin notes and underlined sections on each of the 4 book's individual pages.
At the risk of being speculative, and stated with extreme care, after conversing with older graduate students in the program who have been here 2-3 years longer than the archiver has, the books in the Teaching Fellows lounge were abandoned when the previous occupant of the office left. It is unclear who this occupant was and how they came into possession of a small portion of Professor Sewall's private books, but they have, again according to older graduate students, been there for years. A pattern of aversion exists where the ones who have been in the program 2-3 years were told not to touch the books by the fellows that came before them, and in turn told new Teaching Fellows not to touch the books in the room. It is unclear how long this pattern has existed.
Please watch this space for updates in the coming weeks and months.