UNC-Chapel Hill Wilson Library Exhibit and Lectures Celebrate Wordsworth Collection

Chapel Hill, N.C. - Feb. 2016 - A spring exhibition on view now in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library celebrates the Rare Book Collection’s William Wordsworth Collection and related holdings in Romantic literature and British culture.

“Lyric Impressions: Wordsworth in the Long Nineteenth Century,” on display in the Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room through April 15, is free and open to the public.

The exhibition contextualizes the Wordsworth Collection within global events of the long nineteenth century, from the explosive years of the French Revolution to the cataclysmic First World War.

Thanks to a significant donation from the private collection of Mark L. Reed, Lineberger Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, UNC-Chapel Hill is a major print repository of Wordsworth’s writings in the United States.

On Feb. 22, Duncan Wu, professor of English at Georgetown University, will deliver the keynote lecture “Wordsworthian Carnage,” about Wordsworth’s “Thanksgiving Ode.” The poem commemorates Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

The free public program will begin at 6 p.m. in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room. Visitors may view the exhibition during a reception beginning at 5:30 p.m. For program information, contact Liza Terll, Friends of the Library, liza_terll@unc.edu or (919) 548-1203.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Wilson Library will host the UNC Art Department’s Bettie Allison Rand Lectures in Art History during the week of March 28. The lecture theme, “British Landscape Painting in the Age of Revolution: Romanticism, Naturalism, and the Decline of Deference,” relates to the Wordsworth exhibit and participants will have opportunities to view “Lyric Impressions.”

For information about the exhibition and lectures, please visit the UNC Library News and Events blog.