Ed Wilson’s ideal bookshelf
Provost Emeritus and Professor of English Edwin G. Wilson (‘43), known affectionately to all as “Mr. Wake Forest,” is a legendary name on the Wake Forest campus. He retired before he could teach your students, but for our alumni families, I’m not sure there is a greater name in the Wake Forest stratosphere than Dr. Wilson.
I happened across the excellent work of my colleague Marybeth Wallace (’86), who is Special Assistant to the President. One of her roles is to coordinate the Trustee Reader, which is akin to our Wake Parents and Families e-newsletter, but geared toward our Board of Trustees. In the recent issue, there was a wonderful segment called “Dr. Wilson’s Ideal Bookshelf.” In the spirit of collegiality, both Marybeth and Dr. Wilson agreed to let us share that with the Daily Deacdom.
If one of your New Year’s resolutions was to read more – or read more of the classics – here you go! Being an English major (and a major nerd girl) I will say I was thrilled beyond measure to see “Dover Beach” as one of his top poems. It is probably within my top 3 of all time 🙂
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Ed Wilson’s Ideal Bookshelf:
Just before he left for Mongolia for two-years service in the Peace Corps, Marcus Keely ’11, then the Wake Forest Fellow at START Gallery, asked Provost Emeritus Ed Wilson which books would comprise his “ideal bookshelf.” There was a catch: Marcus had the spines of the books sketched out and there was only room for 10 titles. Dr. Wilson chose the following volumes for his ideal bookshelf:
The Poems of William Butler Yeats
The Poems of William Wordsworth
The Letters of John Keats
The Plays of William Shakespeare
The Plays of Anton Chekov
The Four Gospels
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Le Morte D’Arthur by Thomas Mallory (or another collection of the stories of King Arthur)
Great Expectations and Bleak House by Charles Dickens
“12 of my favorite Poems” from Provost Emeritus and Professor of English Edwin G. Wilson (listed chronologically)
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29: “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”
William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”
William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”
John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”
John Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes”
William Blake, from Milton, “And did those feet in ancient time”
Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”
A.E. Housman, “To an Athlete Dying Young”
William Butler Yeats, “The Song of Wandering Aengus”
William Butler Yeats, “Among School Children”
Dylan Thomas, “Fern Hill”
(Dr. Wilson added that there were many other poems he’d like to include … perhaps in a later edition of Trustee Reader!)