Clare Benedict - The Cooper Library

The Cooper Library

The library at Basel does not represent the full range of Clare Benedict’s books. She obviously felt, late in her life, that the books associated with people buried at the Cimitero Acattolico in Rome should also be represented there. In 1960, shortly before her death, she put together a catalogue of the books she gave to that cemetery. As was the case with Rollins College, the gift to the English Department did not only consist of books. In a move that may tell us something about her attitude to the practice of literature, Clare Benedict also gave along the shelves, a comfortable reading chair, a kidney-shaped table, an oriental rug, even a card table (including playing cards), the bronze statue of a dog, some cutlery, a cased drinking-glass given to her as a child by Henry James, and ribbons from the funeral of Henry Irving. The collection also includes photographs and autographs: an envelope addressed by Queen Victoria to the Queen of Belgium, letters by James Fenimore Cooper, Walter Scott, and Henry James. Among the 1154 items, which cover a wide range of topics, there are first editions of works by Fenimore Cooper and Henry James, collections of newspaper clippings on Henry Irving and George Meredith, playbills of the performances Clare Benedict had seen all over Europe, musical scores, editions of Anglophone classics, guides to (mainly) Italian towns and churches, biographies, and publications that had been given to Clare Benedict. In its variety the library represents the interests of an educated American expatriate lady with a voracious interest in European culture.