and was later a curator at southern methodist university and downtown at the theological st. mark's library. and got a doctorate in renaissance history at columbia and all that led to my being here. >> host: how long have you been up with the public library? >> guest: is a curator of september 2000. >> host: you brought some things out to show us that you have in the collection. >> guest: it's an enormous collection about 2000 linear feet of archives and tens of thousands of printed items, 400 authors but this is what i like to call tip of the bird so to speak. here we have the only surviving manuscript of john dunn's satires and paradoxes that was done in his own lifetime. it's not in his hands but it's in the hands of his secretary and personal assistant.

this has the highest authority directly from dunn's on manuscripts. you can see changes or differences between the text that is represented here and the transcriptions that were made in the first edition perpetuated throughout the centuries. for instance in the sonnet all who were tierney's, all those who have been destroyed by this will be resurrected on the day of judgment. and this word dearth was transcribed as death and was only 20th century that it was read correctly and corrected. >> host: who is john dunn? >> guest: john dunn was a metaphysical poet from the 17th century.

he used wit, philosophical inquiry and in order to create highly formal and complex sonnets and other worms of poetry. >> host: what else you want to show his? >> guest: we have a wonderful dickens collection, over 550 letters. what is really remarkable is that we have 13 of his performance copies, the copies he used to get public readings and this was the first one he ever did. the first reading ever gave was in 1953 and this is the performance copy for a christmas carol. he first read it in birmingham in 1853. this was not yet in existence. he set about creating aating a t

that could be short enough that people could listen to it over period of an hour and 10 minutes or so. so he had a binder in the 1949 edition and then he ran. opera period of a couple of years and a few editorial passes. you can see he sometimes rewroee passages because if he would have deleted something that was mentioned or seen was described and referred to later he had someone introduce it freshly. that is what you see here. he will also find bits of waxwork pages were pasted together that he wasn't going to read it all. use can see posted stamps. these broken off. he used to be able to turn the pages quickly so they have been broken over much use. here we have a photo of him taken in new york. this is the last group of photos

that were ever taken. in new york, 1867, the winter of 1867. this is the second final tour of the united states. >> host: dr. isaac gewirtz how did the library received dickens material? >> guest: the performance copies came to the berg collection to the purchase of the two greatest collections of english and american literature in the 20th century. this was back in 1940 and 41. one was wtu tau who was a great book publishing entity from -- and a friend from the renaissance. a real friend of literature. he had some of the performance copies and so did the other great collector who was time man

of the year. a great financier founder of rca. these performance copies came from their collections. this particular one came from howe. but i want to mention one thing. this belonged to dickens too. here is his pen which you may want to hold. that is his inc. well. this is his ivory letter ope which was given to him by regina hogarth and she had it inscribed or engraved in gothic letters. he put that on everything, in memory of bob in 1862. this is one of the four paws of his recently deceased cat, bob. the story it that dickens had trained bob to put out his light candle with his apostle maybe that's the same path. >> host: not to be terribly crass but how much is all this

worth? >> guest: we don't like to discuss prices but in one sense it's invaluable. i don't like to think of it in terms of financial value because these are priceless objects. they can't be duplicated and certainly the manuscripts i suppose one could find another letter opener although not one with dickens catspaw on it. >> host: all insured i take it? >> guest: the library has insurance for all of it. this is the first volume of three manuscript volumes of virginia woolf's to the white house. we have the vast majority of virginia was papers here. >> host: who was virginia was? >> guest: virginia woolf was one of the great pioneers of the modernist novel along with james joyce. this novel was published in 19

1927. this is in her own binding by the way. she bound her own books. it's not pretty and it's not meant to be. she did do that kind of thing in her private press that she ran with her husband and here you can see names to be used. she has the names of characters some of which don't appear in the published version. she always wrote, she always true a blue crayon line on the left-hand margin so so she could write notes to herself as she went along. in this particular case she has a couple of diary entries. down here for march 9, 1926 she writes i observed today that i'm writing exactly opposite from either books very loosely at first not tight at first and she will have to tide instead of lucent as before also at perhaps three times the speed. most of her giraffes are

grammatical sentences that are complete. they are very tight formal productions. in this case if the sentences are often ungrammatical and unfinished. she was writing about her childhood or adolescence were relationship with your parents. >> host: we want to see one more thing over here in the berg collection but dr. isaac gewirtz is this available for everyone to see or are we getting a special tour? >> guest: we are getting a special to her. the collection is here for researchers who need to study the papers, the manuscripts and rare books. >> host: would one have to apply to see the virginia was manuscript? >> guest: actually bound manuscripts we don't even bring out for researchers because of their fertility. we have it on microfilm. we use the bound manuscripts for presentations and submissions and i do many presentations for the public for displays and

exhibitions. that is how the general public gets access to these materials do those kinds of special presentations. >> host: would you like to see these manuscripts, what we just saw, would you like to see these on line so everyone can see them? >> guest: yes and there actually is a very substantial robust virginia was web site which does contain those digital images, the digitized images of the manuscript and other virginia was manuscripts. here is one of charles dickens desks, his chair, his lamp and his calendar set to the date he died on june 9. the story goes that when the berg collection opened in 1940 and it was a big event mayor

laguardia was there it's all fact that we have a tradition that the mayor being rather robust gentleman sat in this chair and burst through the caning. and then it was retained so supposedly that is the only original part of this chair. >> host: but that's not documented story? >> guest: i have not seen it documented in any way that is passed to the oral tradition. >> host: thank you for showing us her collection. >> guest: my pleasure, thank you for being here. mary ruwart and jeff waddoups talk about the minimum wage law and whether it's beneficial. the two spoke at the freedom is the largest libertarian conference in the country for about 15 minutes. ♪ >> thank you very