The Good Gray Poet

Bookplate of the Trimble Whitman Collection, Dunedin Public Library.

William Heywood Trimble died in Dunedin in 1927, and his will made no mention of his Whitman Collection. Dorothy Stewart (daughter of William and his first wife Henrietta Trimble) was responsible for the donation of the Whitman Collection to Dunedin Public Library in 1927. City Librarian W.B. McEwan described the collection as “the endeavours of an enthusiast who had a full knowledge of his subject.”

Dorothy Stewart shared her father’s enthusiasm for Whitman and continued to collect. Mrs Stewart’s death in 1974 brought to a close nearly 80 years of the Trimbles’ association with Whitman and Dunedin.

On display is the bookplate, designed by H. Prowse to commemorate the gift of the Trimble Whitman Collection to Dunedin Public Library.

Bookplate of the Trimble Whitman Collection, Dunedin Public Library.
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1927 memorandum from W.B. McEwen to Dorothy Trimble re Bookplate.

A 1927 memorandum from City Librarian W.B. McEwen to Dorothy Stewart, donor of the Trimble Whitman Collection, concerning the design of the bookplate. Her opinion is inscribed at the bottom in her own hand.

1927 memorandum from W.B. McEwen to Dorothy Trimble re Bookplate.
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Photograph of Whitman Collection in the former Dunedin Public Library, 1928.

Photograph of Whitman Collection in the former Dunedin Public Library, 1928.
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Dorothy Stewart. ‘Walt Whitman Lecture’. Typescript. Dunedin: Dunedin Public Library, 1941.

In a 1941 lecture, Dorothy Stewart described her father’s collection as the largest in the world outside the Americas.

Dorothy Stewart. ‘Walt Whitman Lecture’. Typescript. Dunedin: Dunedin Public Library, 1941.
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