Nancy Reinhardt was looking for the Henry James letters--hand-written letters
from the novelist to friends and associates--in a wooden file drawer in the
Robinson Room. She crouched to reach the floor-level file and rifled through
the manila folders inside. Every few seconds she extracted a folder, examined
its contents, put it back. Finally, she located two folders containing the
letters she sought and was preparing to close the file when she noticed a
folder with a book inside. She removed it, set it on a table nearby and sat
down to have a closer look. The book was a 1909 literary anthology, The
English Review. James's The Velvet Glove was among the stories in
the anthology, according to a digest on the cover. Reinhardt paused. A
signature below the digest had caught her eye. "Conrad? Joseph Conrad?" she
asked out loud. "It is. That's Joseph Conrad's signature. This is signed by all
of the authors." In addition to those by James and Conrad, the anthology
included stories by H.G. Wells and G.K. Chesterton, both of whom had also
scrawled their names on the cover.
"I find this kind of stuff all the time," said Reinhardt, who is completing
her second year as Special Collections librarian. "I am continually amazed at
the materials we have here."--CONTINUEAn Olympic Achievement, a related story
