An unique collection of fiction set wholly or partially in North Carolina has been donated to the North Carolina Collection at Joyner Library. Called an invaluable source for research in many fields, the collection contains over 1,100 fictional works, covering the period 1830 to the present.

The remarkable books found in the collection include James Boyd's Drums (1925); two titles by Charles Waddell Chesnutt; two novels by Elizabeth Gray Vining; James Hay's The Winning Clue (1919); the first children's book with a North Carolina setting, Mary Ann Bryan Mason's A Wreath from the Woods of Carolina (1859), which has notable color plates of Carolina wildflowers; the first novel set entirely in North Carolina, Eoneguski, or The Cherokee Chief, by Robert Strange; and titles by the first native North Carolina novelist, Calvin Henderson Wiley.

Rare works in the collection include David Morrill's The Passing Clouds (1903); Benjamin Barker's Blackbeard; or, the Pirate of the Roanoke (1847); and William D. Herrington's The Deserter's Daughter (1865). Both Morrill and Herrington are Pitt County authors about whom little is known or written, and both authors furnish valuable local information in their novels. Morrill was a doctor in Farmville who wrote tales for his children patients, and Herrington served in the Confederate Army in the Kinston area, before deserting and disappearing in Wisconsin. Only three copies of the Barker work are known to exist, only one of them in North Carolina.

Many of the titles are first editions or have their original binding or book jackets, and many are signed copies.

Snow L. and B. W. C. Roberts of Durham were pleased to make their gift to Joyner Library because of the university's commitment to North Carolina studies. For further information, contact the North Carolina Collection at 328-6601 or www.lib.ecu.edu/NCCollPCC/ncchome.htm.