Ransom Center Magazine

Harry Ransom Center

Reading and Viewing Room Temporarily Closed

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The Harry Ransom Center continues to monitor COVID-19 and to take appropriate steps for the safety of researchers and staff.

Because of a recent positive test result in our community, we are taking the necessary precaution of closing the Reading and Viewing Room while University Health Services engages in contact tracing.

We will reopen to researchers as soon as we are able.

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The first quarter century of PEN

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Outlined here are eight important moments that occurred during PEN’s first 25 years. All these and many others are treated in more depth and detail in the book PEN: An Illustrated History (Interlink Publishing, September 2021).

 

Above: English novelist and founding president John Galsworthy, PEN founder Catharine Amy Dawson Scott, and Hermon Ould.

 

October 5, 1921
CATHARINE AMY DAWSON SCOTT, a poet and novelist who was sometimes described as “unstoppable,” hosted the inaugural dinner of the PEN Club at the Florence Restaurant in London. More than 40 writers and guests enjoyed a six-course banquet in the chandeliered splendor of the main dining room. The urbane John Galsworthy, the first president, offered the toast. “We writers are in some sort trustees for human nature,” he said. “If we are narrow and prejudiced, we harm the human race. And the better we know each other […], the greater the chance of human happiness in a world not, as yet, too happy.

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ABOUT IRIS JAMAHL DUNKLE
Iris Jamahl Dunkle writes and lives in Northern California and is the author of Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020) and her latest collection of poetry is West : Fire : Archive (Center for Literary Publishing, 2021). Dunkle teaches at Napa Valley College and is the Poetry Director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.

ABOUT ANNE TERRILL

Anne Terrill is a Visitor Services Assistant at the Harry Ransom Center. Prior to joining the Ransom Center, she worked as a guide at Glenstone, a contemporary art museum in Potomac, Maryland. She is currently working on a project to broaden access to information about the Center's windows.

ABOUT ANDI GUSTAVSON

Andi Gustavson is Head of Instructional Services at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center where she teaches primary source literacy using the collections at the Center. She publishes on the ethics of teaching undergraduates with archives, digital pedagogy, and primary source literacy. She is the co-chair of the Association of College and Research Libraries Rare Books and Manuscripts Section’s Instruction and Outreach Committee.

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