News Release

By JIM WALSH
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL – Letters by Robert E. Lee and e.e. cummings are just a few of the treasures visitors will find this fall on guided tours of Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The library has updated its schedule for "Treasures of Wilson Library Tours," adding themes for each date. Set for 3-4:30 p.m. on the Fridays before home football Saturdays, the tours will offer these themes on the following dates:

· "Literary Treasures of Wilson Library," Sept. 3 and Oct. 8

· "Civil War Treasures of Wilson Library," Sept. 17 and Oct. 29

· "Around the World in Wilson: Travel Writings," Sept. 24 and Nov. 5

Wilson is home to the university’s North Carolina, Southern folklife, Southern historical and rare book collections, and to the university archives. Each tour will explore the theme of the day within the different collections.

"The tours really are fun and interesting," said Dr. Libby Chenault of the rare book collection. "People should feel free to invite friends from the community."

The literary treasures tour will showcase manuscripts and letters by authors including cummings, Clyde Edgerton, Shelby Foote, Walker Percy and Thomas Wolfe. Rare and valuable books on display will include works by Charles Dickens, Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath, Henry David Thoreau and William Shakespeare. Also on this tour will be a replica of a 19^th-century North Carolina plantation library and a collection of North Carolina literature.

On the Civil War treasures tour, visitors will see Confederate currency, diaries, letters from officers including Lee and J.E.B. Stuart and newspapers published in North Carolina during the war. Librarians will offer suggestions and answer questions on how visitors can do their own Civil War research in Wilson.

Travel writings by explorers including James Cook and Sir Walter Raleigh will be among items on the "Around the World" tour. Visitors will see rare travel books by James Boswell and W.H. Auden, letters and diaries by Southerners who traveled abroad and descriptions of the American South by northern and foreign visitors. The latter include a moving piece about a slave auction and several less-than-flattering narratives about North Carolina.

Tours will meet just inside the front door of the library. For more information, call 962-1143 or email wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

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(Jim Walsh is a sophomore journalism and mass communication major from Winston-Salem.)

Contact: Dr. Libby Chenault, 962-1143

News Services contact: L.J. Toler, 962-8589