INTRODUCTION

The Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, like many large American libraries, has viewed the acquisition of each millionth volume in its collections as a significant milestone in its development and as an occasion worthy of celebration. The Hanes family of Winston-Salem, North Carolina has shared the Library's enthusiasm, and their generosity has made these celebrations possible. When the UNC collections reached one million volumes in 1960, for example, the Library signaled the event with the purchase of a very special book as millionth volume, a splendid copy of John Gower's Confessio amantis, printed in 1483 by William Caxton, England's first printer. A pattern was established as the Library made similarly important acquisitions for the three succeeding millionth volumes, each combining very considerable historical, cultural, and artifactual interest with substantial research value.

As the collections approached five million volumes in early 1999, library staff and faculty members explored the antiquarian book market for a possible acquisition to celebrate this latest achievement. By the spring they had focused their attention on a large collection of the great Irish poet, William Butler Yeats. The notion of acquiring an entire collection as a millionth "volume" was not unprecedented. In 1984 the Library selected a remarkable collection of the imprints of the famous sixteenth-century Estienne family of printers as its three-millionth volume. With this in mind, the acquisition of a collection of 1,200 volumes of arguably the most important English-language poet of the twentieth century seemed both an outstanding choice for the five-millionth volume and a fitting cap to a century of collecting by the UNC libraries.

As with each of the past millionth volume purchases, the Hanes family, working in recent years through the John Wesley and Anna Hodgin Hanes Foundation, provided the necessary funds. The acquisition was further facilitated by the creator and owner of the collection, Professor George M. Harper, who donated to the Library a significant portion of his materials - the imprints of the Cuala Press, the small private press closely associated with Yeats's family and the poet's own publications. The entire collection arrived in Chapel Hill in July 1999 and has since been housed in the Rare Book Collection in the Louis Round Wilson Library.

We offer the present exhibition as part of the celebration of this important acquisition and landmark in the UNC Library's development. The exhibition focuses on Yeats the man as well as his works and aims to give a sense both of the breadth of this important writer's contributions to twentieth-century literature and of the great depth and research potential of the new Yeats Collection. By integrating related materials from the general Rare Book Collection and from other special collections (notably the G. Bernard Shaw Collection), we also hope to give some idea of the important ways in which these new materials both complement and draw strength from the richness of our existing holdings.

All materials are from the Yeats Collection in the Rare Book Collection unless otherwise identified. We want to thank the Manuscript Department here in Wilson Library for their loan of materials from the A. P. Watt Collection and the Special Collections of Emory University Library and the Beinecke Library of Yale University Library for their permission to display reproductions of photographs and drawings from their collections. Finally, we wish to express our deep appreciation to the Hanes family and the John Wesley and Anna Hodgin Hanes Foundation for making this occasion possible.