User:Leofstan

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Welcome to my user page. My real name is Molly Schwartzburg, and I am the Curator of British and American Literature at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. My Wikipedia edits will for the most part serve to provide or correct information about the Ransom Center. If you have any questions about the Ransom Center and its holdings, please feel free to e-mail me at schwartzburg@mail.utexas.edu.

One significant problem I have noticed in Wikipedia is the misrepresentation of manuscript collections in the "External Links" or "References" section of entries on literary and historical figures. Often, it seems that Wikipedia writers are unfamiliar with what "Papers" implies. It would be useful for these writers to know that sometimes when libraries state that they hold "The papers" of an individual, they may have as little as one folder of manuscripts, while the bulk of material is actually located at another institution. Surfers beware.

And if you're curious about my username, here's the story. It comes from an episode described by Thomas Carlyle in Past and Present. Leofstan was an abbott at Bury St. Edmunds Abbey in the 11th century. As Carlyle tells the story of Edmund's sainthood, after St. Edmund, (also known as Edmund the Martyr) was beheaded in battle, his head miraculously reattached itself to his body. Two centuries later, Leofstan doubted the tale, and instructed monks in the abbey to disinter St. Edmund's body so he could see for himself that the head was attached to the body. Indeed, it was. Years ago when I first read the Carlyle piece, I found the story compelling as a metaphor for literary study: the need to "dig" through the text, to see and understand the materials themselves, rather than depending on others' explanations or beliefs about the text.