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Rufus Hathaway Book Collection

The Rufus Hathaway Collection of Canadian Literature (HIL-SPECH) is strong in first, special, and variant editions, and almost complete works of the “Confederation Poets,” such as Bliss Carman and Charles G. D. Roberts.1 In addition to books, the archival collection includes periodicals, manuscripts, and scrapbooks with clippings of poems, reviews, Hathaway’s commentaries, bibliographical information, and letters. Rufus Hawtin Hathaway (1869 – 1933) was a book collector, independent scholar, and literary critic who amassed a significant collection of Canadian literature covering the period between 1880 and 1930. His extensive correspondence of over 750 letters documents Hathaway’s friendships with literary figures of his day and his activity as a literary critic and a champion of Canadian poets, especially, Bliss Carman.2

His literary taste and expertise in bibliography were recognized by book dealers, publishers, and literary critics who sought his advice about emerging authors and bibliographic details of their works.3 The recognition of Hathaway’s expertise is also evident from the glowing inscriptions on flyleaves by donors to his collection.4 His literary output included articles in literary magazines, including Canadian Bookman, The Sailor, Acadie, The Sewanee Review, The Lamps, Canadian Magazine, and The Canadian Chautauguen.5 His published editorial work on Bliss Carman included Later Poems (1921), Ballads and Lyrics (1923), and Bliss Carman’s Poems (1931).

Hathaway’s unique relationship with Carman is well illustrated in Carman’s letters, compiled by H. Pearson Gundy, that show Hathaway’s persistence in promoting Carman’s work, much like a literary agent.6 The letters also acknowledge Hathaway’s expertise. For instance, in a letter to S. B. Gundy (Canadian manager of Oxford University Press), Carman recommends Hathaway as someone who “knows more about Canadian poets and poetry than anyone does in Canada."7

Following Hathaway’s death in 1933, Lorne Pierce (Chief Editor of Ryerson Press), a good friend of Hathaway and an executor of his estate, coordinated the donation of his library to UNB, with assistance from George H. Locke (Chief Librarian at the Public Library of Toronto).8 Though Hathaway died without a will, he conveyed to Pierce the intention to donate the Canadiana portion of his collection to UNB in order to honour his friends, Carman and Roberts, and to make the collection accessible to the public.9 Pierce added several Carman-related correspondence regarding royalties and copyright to the collection.10 He also continued to add books, letters, photographs, drawings, and Hathaway’s personal objects to the collection.11 Pierce wrote to C. C. Jones, “I’m glad to know that you are on the high road to becoming a research centre in the Dominion."12 He also mentioned the value of the Carman portion of the collection at $ 1000. In a second letter to Jones that day, Pierce commented, “I covet for the University the standing which this acquisition is bound to give.” A list of the original titles in Hathaway’s book collection is available from a 1935 print catalogue created by the UNB library but the collection has been expanded over the years.13

The collection arrived at UNB at an important time in the province’s national and regional self-definition, just before A. G. Bailey was appointed Professor in a newly established History Department in 1938.14 Bailey’s mission as an academic at UNB, and a cultural figure in New Brunswick, was to attract funding and colleagues to build expertise and develop scholarship in New Brunswick history, literature, and culture.15 For instance, he founded the Bliss Carman Society that developed into The Fiddlehead literary magazine in 1945.16 His academic mission was a response to the region’s economic and intellectual marginalization by the federal government.17 In 1944, Bailey recruited W. C. D. Pacey as the new Head of English Department at UNB to revive Fredericton’s status as a literary center.18 Pacey’s  introduction to the Hathaway Collection by Bailey launched his research career by steering Pacey towards the Confederation Poets as a neglected reach area in Canadian literature and helping him in establishing UNB as a “regional incubator” for the study of Canadian literature.19 Pacey designed an honours course based on the collection and organized Roberts Memorial Lectures to encourage research into Canadian literature facilitated by this collection.20 Pacey also made additions to the collection to maintain its currency. His correspondence from 1945 to 1959 with booksellers and librarians documents these efforts.21

The collection was initially housed in its own room on the second floor of the Bonar Law-Bennett Library and borrowers recorded their names in a ledger.22 After 1968, it was moved to closed stacks at the HIL and updated parameters were added to guide the retention of materials and develop the collection, such as the inclusion of early travel literature, publications from small, regional presses and university literary periodicals (Fiddlehead).23  Over the years, the collection grew from approximately 3000 to over 8,200 items and included non-literary material.

During the winter and summer of 2024, SPECH was reconstituted back to its original, 1933 donation using the 1935 print catalogue. The following types of materials, not in the original collection and added after Hathaway’s death, were left for continuity: variant editions of works already in this collection, works by Canadian authors already collected by Hathaway, and issues of serials already in the collection. In UNB WorldCat, approximately 1,500 titles can be browsed using the following location search: b8:HIL-SPECH. A complete listing of the collection (3,500 items) can be made available in a spreadsheet upon request.

While some non-literary materials were transferred to the Rare Books (SPECRB) and Archives Book (SPECAR) collections, other materials were placed in the following new collections: SPECNL (New Brunswick Literature), SPECPC (Monograph Serials from Regional Publishers), and SPECCA (Canadian Literature). These new collections are works-in-progress and will draw from other all-encompassing collections for content, such as, SPECRB and SPECAR, to group materials in these areas of interest.

  • 1Other Confederation Poets active in the Fredericton included Francis Sherman, Bary Straton, Elizabeth Roberts, Theodore Roberts, and William Carmen Roberts. The Ottawa branch of Confederation poets included Archibald Lampman, Duncan Campbell Scott, and William Wilfred Campbell. See Thomas Hodd, “The Fredericton Confederation Awakening, 1843-1900,” New Brunswick at the Crossroads: Literary Ferment and Social Change in the East, ed. Anthony Tremblay (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurie University Press, 2017), 73, 84.  
  • 2Hathaway’s correspondence includes figures such as Mitchell Kennerley, Lorne Pierce, John D. Logan, Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, Duncan Campbell Scott, purchased letters (e.g., between Rupert Brooke and Harold Monro), and letters about the collection that postdate Hathaway’s death. See Robert Gilford Lawrence, “A Descriptive Bibliography of the Manuscript Material in the Rufus Hathaway Collection of Canadian Literature, University of New Brunswick Library” (master’s thesis, UNB, 1947), 20-187. UNB A&SC.
  • 3Tribute by Maud Snarr Hathaway in Bonar Law Bennett Library, in A Catalogue of the Rufus Hathaway Collection of Canadian Literature (Fredericton, UNB, 1933), iv-v.
  • 4Lawrence, A Descriptive Bibliography, 1947, 2.
  • 5Lawrence, A Descriptive Bibliography, 1947, 17.
  • 6H. Pearson Gundy, Letters of Bliss Carman (Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1981), 275, 279, 283-84, 326, 335.
  • 7Gundy, Letters of Bliss Carman, 361.
  • 8Lorne Pierce to C. C. Jones Letters, Presidents’ Papers, UA RG 136 1909-1945, Series 3, 1931-1940, Box 6, file 1 M-R (1933); George H. Locke to C. C. Jones Letters, Presidents’ Papers, UA RG 136 1909-1945, Series 3, 1931-1940, Box 6, file 3 I-Mc (1933). UNB A&SC.
  • 9Lorne Pierce to C.C. Jones, Jan. 20, 1933 and March 30, 1933 (2 letters), Presidents’ Papers, UNB A&SC.
  • 10Lawrence, A Descriptive Bibliography, 17.
  • 11Lorne Pierce to C. C. Jones, March 30, 1933 (2 letters) Presidents’ Papers; Lorne Pierce to Marjorie J. Thompson (Assistance Librarian) Letters, Hathaway Fonds, Series 1, Sub-Series 317-451, File 399, UNB A&SC.
  • 12Lorne Pierce to C.C. Jones, March 30, 1933 (2 letters).
  • 13Bonar Law Bennett Library, A Catalogue of the Rufus Hathaway Collection of Canadian Literature (Fredericton, UNB, 1933).
  • 14A. G. Bailey, “History of the UNB Library to 1959” (N.d. [1981]), 3. Transcript. Bailey Fonds, MG H1, MS4.7.1.7. UNB A&SC, cited in Anthony Tremblay, The Fiddlehead Moment: Pioneering an Alternative Canadian Modernism in New Brunswick (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019) 39, 70.
  • 15Tremblay, The Fiddlehead Moment, 72-96; Tremblay, “Mid-Century Emergent Modernism, 1935-1955,” in New Brunswick at the Crossroads: Literary Ferment and Social Change in the East, (Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University Press), 103.
  • 16Tremblay, The Fiddlehead Moment, 73; Tremblay, “Mid-Century Emergent Modernism, 1935-1955,” 121-123.
  • 17Tremblay, The Fiddlehead Moment, 17-27; Tremblay, “Mid-Century Emergent Modernism, 1935-1955,” 103-108; A. G. Bailey, “History of the UNB Library to 1959” (N.d. [1981]), 3. Transcript. Bailey Fonds, MG H1, MS4.7.1.7. UNB A&SC.
  • 18Tremblay, The Fiddlehead Moment, xv.
  • 19Tremblay, The Fiddlehead Moment, 126-27, 137.
  • 20Tremblay, The Fiddlehead Moment, 127. There are two key letters Tremblay cites to substantiate his observations about how the Hathaway collection was used:
    --Pacey - Letter to Lorne Pierce. [8] May 1947. Desmond Pacey Fonds, MG30, D339, vol. 9, file 36, LAC.
    --Pacey - Letter to Roy Daniells. 29 September 1944. Roy Daniells Fonds, Correspondence Series, 1908–80, box 4, file 14, UBCA.
  • 21Pacey Fonds, MG L 1, Series 4, Case 28, UNB English Department Correspondence 1945-55, and Case 29, UNB English Department Correspondence 1956-59. UNB A&SC.
  • 22Lawrence, A Descriptive Bibliography, 2; see also Hathaway ledgers in UA RG 7 1843-1962. UNB A&SC.
  • 23Lawrence, A Descriptive Bibliography, see Addenda to the Thesis, 1968, p. 1-2.