GEORGE M. HARPER: Scholar and Collector

The remarkable collection acquired for this occasion is the creation of George M. Harper, Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Florida State University and one of the outstanding Yeats scholars of the past forty years. Professor Harper received his B.A. from Culver-Stockton College in 1940. Following military service during World War II, he pursued graduate studies in English literature, receiving his doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1951. Between 1950 and 1966, he was a member of the Department of English at UNC, rising to the rank of full professor and serving as department chairman from 1962 to 1966. While in Chapel Hill, Professor Harper was also Chairman of the Faculty (1961-64) and Chairman of Humanities (1962-65). Very active in the local community, he was a member of the Board of Governors of the Chapel Hill Public Library during the early sixties and served as President of the Chapel Hill Chamber of Commerce (1965).

Professor Harper left Chapel Hill to join the English Department at Florida State University in Tallahassee in 1966. With the exception of a year as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, he has remained at FSU, serving as chairman of the Department of English for several years in the early 1970s. In recognition of his outstanding scholarship and teaching, he was appointed Distinguished Professor in 1978. Now professor emeritus, he continues to live in Tallahassee with his wife, Mary. They have two daughters, one of whom, Margaret, is also a Yeats specialist, with her Ph.D. in English from UNC.

Professor Harper has published extensively on Yeats, especially on the poet's occult interests. His books have included Yeats's Quest for Eden (Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1966), Yeats's Golden Dawn (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1974), W. B. Yeats and W. T. Horton: The Record of an Occult Friendship (New York: Humanities, 1980), and A Critical Edition of Yeats's "A Vision" (New York: Macmillan, 1978). Most recently he served as general editor of the three volume Yeats's Vision Papers (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992). With Richard Finneran, he is co-editor of Macmillan's Collected Works of William Butler Yeats, and he is a member of the editorial board of The Cornell Yeats.

With both a deep knowledge of his subject and a collector's passion, Professor Harper succeeded over a period of forty years in assembling one of the largest and finest Yeats collections in private hands. When he made his decision to place his collection in an academic setting in the summer of 1998, he approached Weldon Thornton of the UNC Department of English and through him made contact with the University Library. Negotiations then ensued between Professor Harper and the Library and subsequently between the Library and the Hanes Foundation. In an effort to facilitate the acquisition, Professor Harper decided to donate to the Library a significant subset of his collection -- 103 imprints of the Dun Emer (later Cuala) Press. Established in 1902 and run by Yeats's sister Elizabeth, this small private press played a significant part in the flourishing of Irish literature over the next forty years. Yeats was directly involved as literary advisor to the press, and his own writings were the source for a high percentage of its publications. The Dun Emer/Cuala books donated by Professor Harper will remain an integral part of the Yeats Collection at UNC.