Book People Archive

Re: John Crowe Ransom, the Fugitive

David Starner wrote:
>> I wonder how one goes about researching something like this, from an
>> internet connection with no specific access to print documents. My 
>> interest
>> is theoretical, as I am not intending to publish these poems even if they
>> are p.d.
> 
> The only serious way to do this is to find facsimile copies of the
> Fugitive, or very trustworthy transcriptions, and look at what they
> have. Even if a particular poem was originally published in an edition
> of the Fugitive that is in the public domain, he may have changed the
> poem before publishing it in the book.

This is often true of poems.  But if your poet is famous enough, there
may well be a variorum edition that will tell you exactly what changes
were made between publications (right down to punctuation and capitalization),
and you can reconstruct the "original" version from that if necessary.   That's
what I did for Yeats' _Michael Robartes and the Dancer_, when our local library
didn't have the quite-rare public domain original, but did have a comprehensive
variorum.  (And indeed, many of the poems, including his famous "The Second
Coming"-- the one with the "slouches towards Bethlehem" line-- had been
substantially revised over time.)

I don't know if anyone's done a variorum for Ransom.  But I do know that
there have been a few bibliographies of his work.  Our library lists
one by Thomas Daniel Young published in 1982, and another by Craig S. Abbott
published in 1999.  These can be very useful for determining where a poem
was first published.  And if you know that, you can set about tracking down
original versions, and seeing whether the originals are still under copyright.

If you find a pre-1923 publication to use, you're all set.  Anything from his
_Poems About God_ from 1919, for instance, is fair game.  The same goes
for anything published in _The Fugitive_ in 1922.  (Agsin, though, you may
need to determine the text of the poem as it was published then.  I've
found inter-library loan helpful here, if I can't find a copy or a varioum
locally.  Eventually mass digitization projects may help too, when more
attention is given to historic serials as well as books.)

For things first published in 1923 and later, it gets trickier.
For poems first published in magazines, you need to check to see whether
the magazine issues themselves are under copyright, and also whether the
contributions are under copyright.  Ransom's American, so his works
needed to get renewed to still be under copyright. Copyright renewals for
contributions to periodicals and for periodicals are both online and
accessible from

   http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/

There are no renewals reported for issues of _The Fugitive_.  (The "first
periodicals renewals" page is useful here for quick lookups; I just checked
to verify that _The Fugitive_ wasn't on it.)  Note that last I checked,
periodicals renewals were *not* in Gutenberg's copyright renewal transcriptions,
but they are available in online page images.

It simply remains, then, to see whether any of the poems were renewed as
individual contributions.  I forget whether Gutenberg scanned all the
periodicals contributions renewals (they're mixed in with books from
mid-1953 on, but were separately listed in 1951, 1952, and early 1953).
But you can check the page images.  A quick look didn't turn up any
individual contribution headings under his name in the relevant years,
but someone considering putting the poems online would probably want
to double-check.

Remember, I am not a lawyer, and should not be relied on for legal advice.
But I hope this helps orient folks on what sort of research they need to
do to research poems like these.

John Mark Ockerbloom