so it was a blessing and now i work with older patients and i tell you i think i went in there and hammered some people. 1 foot over the other patients figured out how to do it. i had a patient that ran on this. there were all sorts of myths like one of my professors told me you will never see a bilateral above walking especially if they are not holding onto some in.

[applause] [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers.

>> and as booktv continues book tour of the new york public library we are now joined by isaac gerwirtz. what do you do here? >> on curator of the berg collection of english and american literature. >> how did you get that position? >> i worked in the new public library in the past. i've been in the rare book division, was later a curator at methodist university and downtown at the general theological seminary, st. mark's library. and got a doctorate and renaissance history at columbia and all that led to my being here. >> how long have you been at the new york public library? >> as a curator since septembe september 2000. >> you brought something sal to show us that you have in the collection. >> i have. the berg is an enormous collection, about 2000 linear feet and tens of thousands of

printed items. this is what i like to call the tip of the berg, so to speak. here we have the only surviving manuscript of john downs holy sonnets sapphires and paradoxes that was done in his own lifetime. it's not in his hand but it's in the hands of his secretary and personal assistant. and this has the highest authority deriving directly from his own manuscripts. and you can see changes or differences between the text as represented here and mistakes and transcriptions that were made in the first edition, and they were perpetuated throughout the centuries. for instance, in this sonnet war, dearth, care needs, all those who have been destroyed by this will be resurrected on the

day of judgment. and this was transcribed as death. it was only 20th century that it was read correctly and corrected. >> who was a? >> john dunne was a great poet. among a group now called the best poets of the 17th century. who used went -- went, philosophical inquiry and then order to create highly formal and complex sonnets and other forms of poetry. >> what else d do do you have? >> web a wonderful against collection, over 550 letters, all of it first edition. but what is remarkable about this, we have 13 of his copies he used to get public readings. this is the first one he ever did. the first reading he ever gave

publicly was 81853, and this is the performance copy for a christmas carol. he first read it in birmingham in 1853. this was not that an existence, and he set about reading text that could be short enough to that people could listen to for over a period of an hour, 10 minutes or so. so we had a binder, put them in the blank leaves and he went through it over period of a couple of years. and you can see that he sometimes rewrote passages because if you would have deleted something when a character was mentioned or seen was described and to refer to later, he had to sum up introduce it. so that's what you see here. you also find bits of?

where pages were pasted together that he wasn't going to read at all. you can see posted stamps. these have broken off so he could turn the pages quickly, protruding. they have broken over much use. here we have a photo of him taken in new york. this is the last group of photos from the last group of photos that was, that were ever taken, new york 1867, the winter of 1867-68 was his second final great reading tour of the united states. [inaudible] >> how did the library get a dickens materials? >> the dickens, the performance companies came to the berg collection through the purchase of the two greatest collections of english and american literature in private hands of the 20th century. this was back in 1940-41.

one was a great book publishing magnate from cincinnati, and a friend of the irish renaissance. a real friend of literature. if some of these performance companies -- copies, and another great collector, a great financial, founder of general electric. so these performance copies came from the collection, but particularly came from the how collection. >> one more spent i want to mention one thing. this belonged to dickens. here is his pen which you may want to hold. that's his ink well. and this is his ivory letter open which is given to him by his sister-in-law, and she had it inscribed, or engraved, in gothic letters, in memory of

bob, 1862. this is a reference to his cat, bob. story hasn't dickens that trained bob to put out his night candle with his palms so maybe that is the same path. >> not to be terribly crass, how much is all this worth? >> welcome we don't like to discuss price, but in one sense it is invaluable. i don't like to think of it in terms of financial values because we can't call these priceless objects because they can't be duplicated. a letter opener, not one with the dickens cat's paw on it. >> all ensured i take a? >> the library has insurance, yes. >> one more manuscript. >> and this is the first volume of three manuscript volumes of

virginia woolf's lighthouse. we have the vast majority of virginia was papers here. she was -- >> and two was virginia will? >> one of the great pioneers of the modern if not along with james joyce. this novel was published in 1927. this is in her own binding by the way. she bowed her own books. it's not meant to be pretty. she could do that kind of thing. here you can see names to be used. just names of characters, some of which don't appear in the published version. and she always wrote, she always drew a blue crayon line on the left hand margin so she could write little notes to her as she went along. now, in this particular page she has a couple of diary entries. and down here for march 9, 1926

she writes i observed today that i am writing exactly opposite from other books. very loosely at first, and she will have to tighten up finally, if always before, also perhaps three times the speed. most overdrafts are grammatical complete, very tight formal productions. in this case the senses are often ungrammatical, unfinished. it was an experiment for her. she was writing about her child, her adolescence, her past. >> we want to see one more thing over here in the berg collection. is this available for everybody to see or are we getting a special to our? >> you are getting a special tour. the collection is here for researchers who need to study the papers, the manuscripts and

rare books. >> does one have to apply to see the virginia woolf manuscript? >> well actually the bound man steps we don't even bring out for researchers because of their fragility. we have it on microfilm. we use the bound man script for presentation and exhibitions, and i do many presentations for reading groups, for the public for displays where -- that's how the general public access to these materials, through those special presentations. >> would you like to see these manuscripts that we just saw, would you like to see those online so everybody could see the? >> yes. and there actually is a very substantial, robust virginia woolf website, which does contain those digital images, the digitized images of that manuscript, and the other manuscripts available.

and here is one of charles dickens desk, his chair, his lab which has been retrofitted for electricity, and his calendar set to the date he died, june 9. the story goes that when the berg collection open in october 1940, and it was a big event, the mayor of laguardia was invited. that's all fact, but we have it through oral tradition that the mayor being rather robust gentlemen sat in this chair and burst through the gain. and then it was retained. so supposedly that's the only non-original part of this chair. chair. >> but that's not a documented the stores to? i have not seen it documented in any way, but that's what is passed in oral tradition. >> thank you fho