The Booth Family Center for Special Collections and the Georgetown University Library are delighted to announce the generous donation and complete cataloging of the Paul Kennerson Conrad Collection. Paul Kennerson’s (C’63) thoughtful donation of more than 200 volumes of works by and about Joseph Conrad is an important addition to a world-class collection of 18th- and 19th-century literature.
Assembled over the course of more than 50 years by Paul Kennerson — who fell in love with Conrad’s prose as a Georgetown undergraduate—this collection of more than 200 rare and important volumes of works by and about Joseph Conrad had been regarded as one of the two most comprehensive Conrad collections in private hands. Now held in the Booth Family Center for Special Collections, the Paul Kennerson Conrad Collection includes first editions, rare imprints, signed books by Joseph Conrad and Jessie Conrad, privately printed editions, annotated works, editions for the armed services, comic book adaptations, and fine bindings.
Among the many notable items in the collection are Conrad’s first work Almayer’s Folly, published in 1895; the 1902 appearance of “Heart of Darkness” in Youth : a narrative, and two other stories, an edition “For circulation in India and British Colonies only”; Joseph Conrad's letters to his wife, signed by Jessie Conrad; Simple cooking precepts for a little house, printed for private circulation, with a preprint of Joseph’s preface to Jessie’s A handbook of cookery for a small house, Chance : a tale in two parts, one of fewer than 50 copies printed in 1913 with the integral title page; and The inheritors : an extravagant story.
Many more rare and wonderful items await discovery in the Paul Kennerson Conrad Collection. Researchers can make an appointment to study items from the Collection by emailing speccoll@georgetown.edu