A timely exhibit: Poetry, Holiday Greetings, and the Private Press: An Exhibit of Robert Frost's "Christmas Cards" & Related Items from the John Galen McEllhenney Frost Collection

Dear readers:

We hope you'll stop by the main Library to view this wonderful new exhibit curated by Jesse Mann and Candace Reilly. It's definitely appropriate for this time of year! Be sure to check Library hours before making a trip to campus.

Please see the essay below by Dr. Mann for more information and historical context about the items on display. 

Exhibit title: Poetry, Holiday Greetings, and the Private Press:
An Exhibit of Robert Frost's "Christmas Cards" & Related Items
from the John Galen McEllhenney Frost Collection

From 1934 through 1962, American poet Robert Frost sent out an annual Christmas greeting. These “Christmas cards,” as they are often called,(1) were small booklets or chapbooks (2) usually containing a single Frost poem and frequently adorned with illustrations. Most of these Christmas greetings (25 of them) were printed in widely varying print runs by Joseph Blumenthal’s Spiral Press in New York.(3) Indeed,  Blumenthal initiated what became Frost’s yearly practice by printing the first holiday greeting (the poem “Christmas Trees”) in 1929 without the poet’s knowledge.(4) As Blumenthal noted, such was “the beginning of the tradition of the Frost Christmas cards which was to continue until 1962.”(5)

The collaboration that ensued between Frost and Blumenthal’s Spiral Press underscores the connection between poetry and privates presses. As Peter Armenti wrote in a 2014 blog for the Library of Congress, “Frost’s Christmas chapbooks are a wonderful example of the longstanding collaboration between book artists and literary artists in the creation of fine press publications.”(6) This exhibit seeks to emphasize the importance of the private press and fine printing in the twentieth century and to highlight some of Drew’s holdings pertaining to the private press movement.(7) 

“Poetry, Holiday Greetings, and the Private Press,” made possible by a generous donation from Rev. John Galen McEllhenney (T ’59), includes fourteen of Frost’s Christmas cards. In addition, there are several books from the McEllhenney collection and from Drew’s circulating collection, as well as a framed photo of Frost inscribed by the poet to Drew benefactor Bela Kornitzer (“the Maygar inquisitor”).

The exhibit is on view in the main Library through 10 February 2023. (notes below)

-- Jesse Mann

Notes:
(1) See Joan St. C. Crane, Robert Frost: A Descriptive Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library University of Virginia (Pall Mall: Dawson & Sons, 1974), 108-44. Thanks to The Chatham Bookseller for lending us this bibliography.
(2) Will Ransom, Selective Check Lists of Press Books (New York: Duschnes, 1963), 402, calls them “booklets.” In a blog post for the Library of Congress, Peter Armenti calls them “chapbooks” (https://blogs.loc.gov/catbird/2014/12/christmas-greetings-from-robert-frost/). John Carter, ABC for Book Collectors, 6 th ed. (London: Granada, 1982), 59 defines chapbooks as “small pamphlets of popular, sensational, juvenile, moral or educational character, originally distributed by chapmen or hawkers, not by booksellers.”

(3) On The Spiral Press, see Paul McPharlin, “The Spiral Press: Twenty Years,” Publisher’s Weekly 150, no. 15 (1946): 2231-2236; and Joseph Blumenthal, The Spiral Press through Four Decades: An Exhibition of Books and Ephemera (New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1966). Blumenthal also authored a short pamphlet on his collaboration with Frost entitled Robert Frost and the Spiral Press (New York, 1963).

(4) See ibid., 21-22.

(5) Ibid., 22.
(6) Armenti, “Christmas Greeting from Robert Frost, December 24, 2014,” https://blogs.loc.gov/catbird/2014/12/christmas-greetings-from-robert-frost/.

(7) On private presses and the private press movement, see Roderick Cave, “Private Presses,” in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, ed. Allen Kent, Harold Lancour, and Jay E. Daily, 73 vols. (New York, Dekker, 1968-), 24: 193-205; and idem, The Private Press, 2 nd ed. (New York: Bowker, 1983).