With Love, Jimmy : The James Merrill Collection

In 2015, the Rare Book and Special Collections Division acquired an extensive collection of materials by and about American poet James Ingram Merrill (1926-1995) that had been amassed by a private collector. The collection contains first editions, broadsides, photographs, and a small number of manuscripts, as well as a number of important association and dedication copies of the author’s works. Many of these are inscribed to his lovers and friends. Over the course of his life, Merrill had several lovers, but among the longest lasting, and perhaps most Influential, were Kimon Friar, David Jackson, David McIntosh, and Peter Hooten. The importance of these relationships to Merrill’s learning and writing, as well as the inspiration they provided, are oftentimes evident through the inscriptions.

Born in New York in 1926, James Merrill grew up amid wealth and privilege: his father was a founding member of the investment firm Merrill Lynch, and his mother was a publisher-turned socialite. Merrill’s interest in language developed when he was a young man from his governess who, in addition to English, also spoke French and German. Merrill soon began writing poetry and short stories, which his father secretly collected and had privately printed as Jim’s Book in 1942, while James was still in high school.

 

Merrill went on to attend Amherst College, where he met his first lover, his professor and tutor Kimon Friar. Friar quickly recognized Merrill’s literary talent and gathered a collection of Merrill’s poems–the majority written about his relationship with Friar–and in 1946 arranged to have them privately published.  The title of this collection is The Black Swan, for which Merrill was awarded the Glascock Poetry Prize.

 

The two lovers were discovered by Merrill’s mother, who forced them to separate, and Friar soon after decamped to his native Greece.  Merrill, twenty years old and without the financial means to defy his mother, remained behind.  Merrill’s first collection of poetry to be commercially published appeared under the title First Poems in 1951.

 

In 1953, Merrill met David Jackson, who would become his partner for three decades. The couple bought a house on Water Street in Stonington, Connecticut and another house in Athens, Greece, where they spent their winters.

 

Over the next several years, Merrill would proceed to win many of the most prestigious awards for his writing, including the National Book Award for Nights and Days (1966), the Bollingen Prize in 1973, the Pulitzer Prize for Divine Comedies (1976), the National Book Award again for Mirabell: Books of Number (1978), the National Book Critics Circle Award for his epic poem The Changing Light at Sandover (1983), and the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress for The Inner Room (1988).

 

The Inner Room was dedicated to American actor Peter Hooten, whom Merrill had taken as his lover in 1983, and who would remain with him until Merrill’s death.

 

Merrill’s poetry changed over the years from a very formal lyric poetry to a freer form and relaxed verse.  It changed even more with his adoption of occult communication through a Ouija board.  Merrill and Jackson would regularly hold seances and transcribe messages from deceased friends, spirits, and angels.  These transcriptions were then incorporated into Merrill’s poetry, notably “The Book of Ephraim,” the last poem in Divine Comedies (1976); Mirabell: Books of Number (1978); and Scripts for the Pageant (1980), which were later issued as one epic poem, The Changing Light at Sandover (1982).

 

 

 

Merrill succumbed to HIV at the age of 68 on February 6, 1995 while vacationing in Tuscon, Arizona, and just after completing his final book A Scattering of Salts (1995).  A number of posthumous publications of Merrill’s work have since been released, including Last Poems (1998), as well as a number of anthologies.

This collection and others are available for research in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. For more information, send a query to the reference staff via Ask-A-Librarian.

 

SOURCES

“James Ingram Merrill,” https://www.loc.gov/item/n80026113/james-ingram-merrill/

“James Merrill,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Merrill

“The Black Swan,” Kimon Friar, and Merrill Interview. For translation of inscription in Jim’s Book: http://omeka.wustl.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/merrill-poetry-mss/black-swan/merrill-interview

 

RELATED RESOURCES

https://library.wustl.edu/spec/james-merrill/

https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/collections/highlights/james-merrill-papers

https://guides.loc.gov/sylvester-and-orphanos-collection-and-archive/introduction

 

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