More than 600 books, pamphlets and offprints from the library of Professor Kenneth Muir (1907 - 1996), King Alfred Chair of English Literature at the University of Liverpool, 1951-1974. Muir wrote poetry, plays, and short stories (he published under various pseudonyms, including E. G. Newberry, Louis Cartel and Mark Finney) and was a translator, editor, and, most notably, an eminent Shakespearean scholar and critic.
The collection is grouped by genre:
A: Muir’s own works, from his first book, the poetry collection The Nettle and the Flower (1933) to the 1996 poem, ‘Missing Snapshot’ in Making Connections: a festschrift for Matt Simpson (1996)
B: Poetry, 16th – 20th century; C: Drama, 18th – 20th century; D: Classics, essays, history, 20th century; E: Novels, crime fiction and Folio Society publications, 19th – 20th century.
The collection is particularly rich in first editions of the work of his exact contemporary W.H. Auden (1907-1973). Books with author’s dedications or inscriptions to Muir include works by John Redwood Anderson, George Barker, Anna Bunston de Bary, Frank Buchanan, Wilfred Rowland Childe, Leonard Clark, Mary Dalton, Bernard Jones, James Allan Mackereth, the translator J.G. Nichols, G. Edward Pine, Matt Simpson, Samuel Schoenbaum. There are also more than a dozen prize books awarded to Muir from Epsom College 1918-1926.
Kenneth Muir's papers in the University Archive document his work as Professor (1951-1974)and Emeritus Professor in the Department of English, Dean of the Faculty of Arts (1958-1961), and Public Orator (1961-1965).
