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The Feinberg-Whitman Collection
Dr. Charles Feinberg
(1900-1988) was born in London, England in 1900. In 1923 he
emigrated with his family to Canada and then shortly thereafter to
the United States. From 1923 to 1925 he was a manager for the Regal
Shoe Company in Detroit, Michigan. From 1925-28, he was manager of
the Silent Automatic Corporation; 1928-51, Vice President of Argo
Oil; 1951-58, President of Argo Oil; and 1958-62, Vice President of
the Speedway Petroleum Corporation.
In 1955, Feinberg was named to
the Chair of the Michigan Historical Commission; 1959, the Detroit
Historical Society gave him its Distinguished Citizen Award; 1963,
he received an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from Albion College;
and in 1969, as a founding member of the American Friends of Hebrew
University, he received a fellowship from the school.
In addition to these positions and activities, Charles Feinberg
was an avid collector and donor of art and materials related to
James Joyce, Walt Whitman and other modern American and English
authors. Feinberg was also an honorary consultant to the Library of
Congress; editor of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review; and a
member of the Tuskegee Institute Alumni, Booker T. Washington Trade
Association, Associated Electricians, Bridge Builders Duplicate
Bridge Club, NAACP, Highland Park Caucus Club, Blessed Sacrament
Cathedral (Detroit), and the Detroit Meridianites.
 Throughout the last few years of his life, Charles Feinberg
donated a number of items to the Albion College Library. Included in
this gift are the following works of Walt Whitman: After All, Not
to Create Only; An American Primer; Complete Poems and Prose;
Complete Prose Works; Democratic Vistas; The
Gathering of the Forces, Volumes 1 and 2; Good-bye My Fancy;
Leaves of Grass,
editions from 1856, 1872, 1876, 1881, 1882, 1889; Notes and
Fragments; November Boughs; Specimen Days and Collect; and
Two
Rivulets, Drum-Taps and Sequel from 1865; and People
and John Quincy Adams, a facsimile of the 1848 edition. In
addition, Feinberg gifted a number of books about
Whitman--including, by Horace Trauble: At the Graveside of Walt
Whitman, Camden's Compliment to Walt Whitman, In Re Walt Whitman,
and With Walt Whitman in Camden Volumes 1-4; and by John
Burroughs: Notes on Walt Whitman: As Poet and Person.
 In
honor of the Director of Libraries of Albion College, Charles Held,
Feinberg donated images of Whitman by G. Frank Pearsall (1872), a
wood engraving of a portrait by William J. Linton (1875), and photos
of printed and hand-colored broadsides of Whitman's "Poem Describing
a Perfect School" (1923).
Feinberg died
in 1988 in Miami, Florida, leaving his treasured
collection of Walt Whitman manuscripts to the
Library of Congress.
Southern Illinois University at
Carbendale has his collection of James Joyce
correspondence. Other institutions with collections donated by
Feinberg include the
Feinberg-Whitman Collection
at the University of Illinois at Springfield, the
Charles Feinberg Collection of
Artists' Letters and the
Jervis McEntee Papers at
the Archives of American Art, the
Walt Whitman Collection at
the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of
Texas at Austin, the
Charles Feinberg Collection of Walt
Whitman Portraits at Louisiana Tech University Special
Collections, the
Walt Whitman Book Collection
at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, the
Walt Whitman Collection in
the University of North Carolina at Charlotte Special Collections,
the
Whitman Collection at
Washington University in St. Louis, and the Charles E. Feinberg
Collection of Valuable Judaica at Parke-Bernet Galleries.
Former president of Albion College, Melvin Vulgamore, said of Feinberg
that his
"contributions to the Albion College library were but a part
of his total commitment to libraries, public institutions of
which he was a proud 'graduate.' As an immigrant himself,
Mr. Feinberg appreciated the role that the free public library
has played and continues to play in the lives of so many who
come here seeking opportunity and freedom. His advocacy of strong public libraries is documented in a
letter in his hand to the Albion College librarian dated 5 August
1983. In it, he notes with regret the closing of several branches of
the Detroit Public Library and asks that all librarians "raise their
voices in protest." It is fitting that his concern, generosity,
and commitment be acknowledged publicly on gift plates inside so many
thousands of volumes in our library." (from a letter to Mr. Hugo Krave,
President of the Drusilla Farwell Foundation, dated March 23,
1988)
Publications by Feinberg about Whitman include: Walt Whitman and his Doctors,
"Adventures in Book Collecting," "Percy Ives, Detroit, and Walt
Whitman," "A Whitman Collector Destroys a Whitman Myth," and
Walt Whitman: A Selection of the Manuscripts, Books and Association
Items Gathered by Charles E. Feinberg: Catalog of an Exhibition Held
at the Detroit Public Library, Detroit, Michigan, 1955.
To learn
more about Feinberg himself, see John C. Broderick's article "The
Greatest Whitman Collector and the Great Whitman Collection" in the
Library of Congress' Quarterly Journal (April 1970);
William White's "Charles E. Feinberg, Book Collector" from
The Private Library, v.1 (1968) and "How to Become
Eminent; or, Life Among the Feinberg Manuscripts" from The Walt
Whitman Birthplace Bulletin, IV(4), July 1961; or Ed Folsom's
“Charles E. Feinberg: A Tribute” and C. Carroll Hollis'
"Recollection of Charles Feinberg" from Walt Whitman Review
6(1). |
