English professor finishes worthy Wordsworth work

By Elizabeth Adler
Collegian Editor
February 20, 2008

Exhausted and contemplative, Dr. James Butler sits in the Wordsworth library in Grasmere, England. All alone, he thumbs through aged manuscripts. It is damp and chilly, and he has trouble reading Wordsworth’s handwriting, as the prehistoric wiring in the library does not provide for the necessary amount of simultaneous light and heat. Butler squints and dips his head down closer to the manuscript and starts to scribble furiously into a black and white marble notebook. He is working on an edition of The Cornell Wordsworth, Cornell University’s series of volumes comprised of annotated editions of Wordsworth’s poems.

“[Back in 1975] manuscripts were kept in a safe, but it was never locked because they were afraid of losing the key,” Butler, an English professor here at La Salle, said. “Occasionally there would be a toad and I would have to shoo it out.”

Fast forward 30 years: Butler, who also serves as the director of the university’s Undergraduate Student Research Program, is finally done, having put the finishing touches on the very last volume in the set. Released this past December, the volume Butler was involved with.

To the young scholar who worked so hard in the 700-person village of Grasmere on and off for about five years in the ‘70s, it seemed as though the day when he would be done researching and writing about Wordsworth would never come. Now that day has finally passed for the lifetime Lasallian who graduated from the school in the ‘60s, only to return as a professor in 1971.

“I feel postpartum depression,” Butler said. “I never had to wonder what to do next.”

At over 1,200 pages, the newest edition is devoted to one singular Wordsworth poem, The Excursion. Wordsworth’s longest published poem, The Excursion, runs around 8,000 lines. There hasn't been a scholarly edition devoted to the poem in at least 50 years, and Butler's edition is the only one that covers the original 1814 text.

The volume is not just comprised of the poem and extensive editors’ notes. Also included are manuscript histories, an introduction, a list of variants and photographs. All of these elements combined make this volume the only edition that offers the most information and history of The Excursion.

Butler studies manuscripts as “physical objects.” He stressed the importance of noticing small details on each manuscript, such as watermarks, and so it was crucial to use the original text.

“We were able to date manuscripts by studying and comparing watermarks,” he said.

Butler clearly had a love for his work, but he indicated he would miss other intangibles as well. His colleagues, some of whom he started working with 30 years ago, are people he has come to treasure. Spread across two continents, they most likely will not get to see each other very often, although he will be seeing them in March for a celebratory reunion.

“I've saved some of the letters sent back and forth between us,” Butler said, before adding that several of the notes and letters are being donated to Cornell University’s library.

The upcoming reunion is partly held to honor Stephen Parrish, the general editor who started The Cornell Wordsworth. According to Butler, his involvement with The Cornell Wordsworth is due to Parrish. Butler said he just “couldn’t say no” when Parrish asked him to continue the work that he could no longer do.

Originally, Butler’s area of interest did not lie in Wordsworth, but rather in John Keats.

“I thought his poetry was passionate,” he said. "There’s a lot of lush imagery and sound patterns.”

However, upon arriving at Cornell University for graduate work, Butler found that Cornell had an extensive collection of Wordsworth’s manuscripts, and that the best Keats material was at Harvard University. As a result, Wordsworth prevailed.

However, Butler did see similarities between Keats and Wordsworth.

“Both have an acute sense of the suffering of the poor, and share similar ideas on the importance of poetry,” he said.

It’s hard to say it didn’t work out since Butler is now one of the preeminent Wordsworth scholars in the world.

Butler’s contributions to The Cornell Wordsworth are extraordinary and versatile. Not only did he edit, annotate and explain, but he had to learn absolutely everything single thing there is to know about Wordsworth.

At one point, the walls in Butler’s office were covered in a timeline of Wordsworth’s daily activities.

Butler also had to keep up with the latest technology. In 1975, he had to use two typewriters.

“It could take an hour to type a page,” said Butler.

Technology has come a long way since 1975, and advances with computers made it possible to have versions of the editions in disk form, which also made the editing process for Butler significantly easier.

For this last volume, Butler was able to use a computer and incorporate different PDF files.

“We just did it all with desktop publishing software,” he said.

“There are tens of thousands of sheets of paper on the first volume,” he said. “Now there’s just one disc.”

As might be expected, Butler has accrued some interesting personal stories during his time working on The Cornell Wordsworth. He got the chance to edit his favorite Wordsworth poem, The Ruined Cottage, for one volume. However, he traces an even more interesting tale all the way back to his five years in the small 700-person town of Grasmere.

At the time, he had to take the pictures of the manuscripts himself, and in one picture of a manuscript, it appears that there is a small smudge at the top of the page. In actuality, that smudge is the top of one of Butler’s daughter’s knitting needles, which he used to hold the manuscript down.

Although there is no more Wordsworth left for Butler to edit, he indicated that he is not finished with writing and editing. Much of his work is La Salle-centric to boot. The curator of the Connelly Library’s Wister Family Special Collection, Butler has written articles on Charles Wilson Peale, the Wister family and the history of La Salle. He is currently working on a piece about Belfield for the school.

Although he clearly owes his Wordsworth career to his attendance at Cornell, he beams with great pride when mentioning La Salle, which is, in many ways, his other life work. In addition to being a second home and a major source of his writing and research, Butler indicated that he appreciates the school for its continuing generosity and support of his work on Wordsworth.

adlere1@lasalle.edu