The Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) acquires, preserves, and makes available for research use rare and unique materials of permanent research value. The library’s holdings span from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries, and support research in a wide array of fields and disciplines. Subject areas of special strength include literature; African American history and culture; and the history of Atlanta, Georgia, and the South. MARBL houses the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, an extensive collection of more than 60,000 volumes of English language poetry. MARBL’s holdings include rare and unique materials in a wide variety of formats including rare books, periodicals, pamphlets, sheet music, broadsides, maps, manuscripts, film, and audio and video recordings. The University Archives—documenting the history of Emory University and the history of higher education in the South—also are housed in MARBL. 

Literature
African American History and Culture
Southern History

For information on locating these and other materials, please see Finding Books, Manuscripts, and Audiovisual Materials.

Literature
MARBL holds particularly rich collections documenting the Irish literary revival; 20 th century American, British, and Irish poetry; African-American literature; and Georgia authors.

The library’s Irish literary revival collections are strong in manuscripts and books related to W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Maud Gonne, and others of their circle. Within the broad field of 20 th century poetry, the library has special strength in the literary archives of the Belfast Group poets (Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Michael Longley, among others), poets from the Republic of Ireland, and post-World War II British and American poets (notably Ted Hughes, Anthony Hecht, and James Dickey). The library also holds the publisher’s archive of the Gallery Press, which includes correspondence and manuscript materials related to a broad array of contemporary Irish poets and playwrights; and the archive of Harry Duncan, publisher of the Cummington Press.

African American literary collections include the archive of James Weldon Johnson, as well as significant collections related to the Harlem Renaissance novelist and poet Langston Hughes and the papers of the Georgia-born novelist John Oliver Killens. The Camille Billops and James V. Hatch collection of African American performing arts includes hundreds of playscripts including scripts by Amiri Baraka, Zora Neale Hurston, and August Wilson, among many others.

The library’s southern literary collections include the literary archives of numerous Georgia authors as well as major American poets, short story writers, and novelists (James Dickey, Flannery O’Connor, and Robert Penn Warren).

Within MARBL’s holdings are a number of discreet book collections of extraordinary depth. The Raymond Danowski Poetry Library is made up of over seventy thousand volumes of poetry, including major and minor poets from the U.S., Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, the Caribbean, and other English-speaking countries and regions. The J.M. Edelstein collection of American poetry is particularly strong in Wallace Stevens and in press collections, including complete or nearly complete collections of Cummington Press, Abattoir Editions, Stone Wall, Windhover Press, and the Jargon Society.

MARBL also has extensive book holdings in British poetry of the Romantic Period, the 19 th century English novel, the detective novel (the Glover-Greene Collection of Victorian Detective Fiction and the Sir Hugh Greene Collection), and 19 th century yellowbacks.

Please see the subject guide for literature for information concerning additional collections. The finding aids for the Irish literary collections are fully searchable via the Irish Literary Collections Portal located at <http:irishliterature.library.emory.edu>.

African American History and Culture
African American collections focus on four principal areas. The first is Black Print Culture, the world of literature created by and for, and often published within, the African American community. Emory collects African American-published books, pamphlets, periodicals, broadsides, sheet music, and ephemera; papers of journalists and publishers; and material related to publishing history, including adverts, book notices, and salesman’s samples. Second, MARBL collects materials related to political activists, especially those on the political left. Principal holdings include the papers of Louise Thompson Patterson, Matt and Evelyn Crawford, and bookstore owner William Crawford. A third area of interest are papers of expatriate African American literary and cultural figures, including Bricktop (Ada Smith), Josephine Baker, and figures such as Chester Himes held in the Michel Fabre Archive of African American Letters. Fourth, Emory focuses on papers related to the civil rights and post-civil rights movements. Recently acquired collections include the papers of Vincent G. Harding, a founder of the Institute of the Black World; Doris A. Derby, a founder of the Free Southern Theater; Joan C. Browning and Constance W. Curry, both active in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee; and Elaine Brown, the only woman to head the Black Panther Party. The Michael L. Lomax papers illustrate the public and political pursuits as well as the academic career of an important Atlanta political and cultural leader during the years 1973-1993. 

Please see the following subject guides for information concerning additional collections: African American History and Culture, Civil Rights, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Southern History
MARBL is strong in research collections devoted to the social and cultural history of the American South, with a particular emphasis on Georgia and Atlanta.

Areas of particular strength include the Civil War, Methodism, Civil Rights (with a particular focus on Civil Rights and the Left; and the role of women in the Civil Rights struggle), journalism, women’s lives and work, and Jewish history and culture. Manuscript collections of note include the Keith M. Read Confederate collection and the papers of Methodist leaders John Wesley and Warren Candler; of Pulitzer-Prize winning journalists Ralph McGill and Claude Sitton; of women’s activists including Josephine Wilkins, Frances Pauley, Constance Curry and Joan Browning; of political and civic leaders including William B. Hartsfield, Sam Nunn and Morris Abram; of business leaders and philanthropists Asa Candler and Robert W. Woodruff; and of figures central to Southern Jewish history, such as Rabbi Jacob Rothschild. The library is actively developing collections of personal papers and archives documenting the post-civil rights transformation of Atlanta and corresponding shifts in the goals and aspirations of African Americans in politics, business, housing, education, social justice, and other arenas. MARBL continues to build its holdings of books printed in the South, with the J. Durelle Boles Collection of Southern Imprints adding significant strength in this area.