Jane Rule’s Library

 

Photo credit: http://worldwidegreeneyes.com/style-fashion-portraits/jane-rule/

Recent updates from Bolerium, the awesome radical used bookseller, indicate to me that Jane Rule’s library has been dissambled and is being sold, book by book. You can buy a copy of Eloise Klein Healy’s collection of poetry inscribed to Rule and her long time partner Helen Sonthoff. Or pick up a few books by Margaret Atwood, also inscribed or Rule and Sonthoff. Sales like this is a boon for collectors. For bibliophiles, the only thing better than finding a beloved copy of a used or rare book is finding one owned by a notable author with inscriptions to and marginalia of that author.

Yet, I am sad about the dissembling of Rule’s library. Consider William Morris for instance. His library remains intact and is now being digitized for scholars. Why is the same time and attention not being given to Rule? Without diminishing the significance of Morris, I want us to contemplate the significance of Rule. Why is her  library being dissembled? Why is her library not worthy of being kept intact, of being digitized like Morris’s library? What do we need to do to make lesbian’s literary work as significant as the works of heterosexual and homosexual white men?

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