1: Across the Pond for Poetry

I am a proud third generation Michigan library worker.

My great aunt Shirley Schryer worked for the Detroit Public Library until World War II when she joined the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) in Hawaii. When my mother Diane Schryer Fichter was carrying me, she was a night manager at the University of Michigan graduate library. She retired from the University of Michigan Law Library.

I came to librarianship as an adult by way of primary source research. Do not let my sensible shoes fool you! Library research is an adventure.

Join me at the Library of Congress, the British Library, the Bodleian Library of Oxford College, and the National Library of Wales among others with tales of traveling and research that include rare book feeding frenzies, friendly libraries that resemble prisons, manipulating honest Welshwomen for a dissertation, very cold nudist beaches, warm beer in Rome, and nearly going hungry for photocopying in a foreign land. And it all happened to me!

In 1993, I traveled across the pond to do primary source research as part of a junior year summer abroad program. I lived on the University of London campus with instruction provided by Michigan State University.

I was majoring in English and minoring in Women’s Studies. I’d fallen head over heels for a 17th century Welsh poet named Katherine Philips. The first time I read her poetry, I threw the book and screamed. She wrote romantic verse about female friendship. She was describing my life, my relationships. Katherine Philips set me on fire. She hadn’t been republished yet; the last printing of her poetry was in 1710.

My research goal: an annotated bibliography of all work written by or about her. #englishmajor.

Philips wrote this poem to a woman she named Lucasia. Lucasia married on the sly, without telling her first. Then, Philips accompanied the new couple on their honeymoon and lived with them for a year. #neveralone

Content, to my dearest Lucasia

Then, my Lucasia, we who have
Whatever Love can give or crave;
Who can with pitying scorn survey
the Trifles which the most betray;
With innocence and perfect friendship fir’d
By Vertue joyn’d, and by our choice retir’d

Follow along on these travels with me in future issues of my newsletter In Context.