Contributors

Kenneth Benson is an editor in The New York Public Library's Publications Office. He is co-author of The Hand of the Poet: Poems and Papers in Manuscript (New York: Rizzoli, 1997), which was based on a major two-part exhibition drawn from the holdings of Library's Berg Collection of English and American Literature. He has written biographical and historical essays for several volumes in The New York Public Library's Collector's Edition series of literary classics, including Selected Poetry of Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott: An Intimate Anthology, O Pioneers! and Other Tales of the Prairie, and Leaves of Grass: A Selection of Poems and Prose. The most recent NYPL publication to which he contributed is The New York Public Library Literature Companion (2001). He was also a writer/researcher for the 1999 exhibition, "'Such Friends': The Work of W.B. Yeats," which--drawing from the Library's extensive holdings relating to the poet, his family, and his patrons--celebrated Yeats by way of his many personal and professional relationships.