Credit: Provided

"M.H. Abrams at Cornell University," a new publication chronicling the career and legacy of the influential literary scholar, is part of a digital archive available free on the Internet.

The collection of interviews, lectures, articles, essays, photography, video and audio examines Abrams' impact on the Cornell community and the greater community of scholars, including his role in defining the great literature studied by students around the world.

The Abrams collection can also be ordered from the Campus Store as a 95-page book and two-DVD set with DVD-ROM content, featuring the text of the book in PDF format as well as the text for "High Romantic Argument" (essays from a 1978 symposium) and "The Milk of Paradise," Abrams' 1934 undergraduate thesis at Harvard. Perfect-bound copies are also available.

The Abrams materials are part of The Legacy of Cornell Faculty and Staff Collection, a project of Internet-First University Press (IFUP), co-founded by J. Robert Cooke, former dean of the faculty, and Kenneth M. King, former vice provost for computing.

In addition to newspaper, magazine and journal articles, the project includes new photographs of Abrams by Cornell President Emeritus Dale R. Corson.

"Dale, who's a world-class photographer, took it on himself to do some portraits of Mike," Cooke said.

Audio and video in the collection includes Abrams' lectures from 2005 on how the Cornell Library acquired a significant James Joyce collection; Abrams being interviewed by professors Jonathan Culler and Neil Hertz in 2008; and his public lecture "On Reading Poems Aloud," filmed in July 2008 in Statler Auditorium.

Abrams joined Cornell's English faculty in 1945 and is the Class of 1916 Professor of English Literature Emeritus. An authority on 18th- and 19th-century literature, literary criticism and European romanticism, Abrams is well-known as the founding and general editor of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, from its first publication in 1962 through its eighth edition in 2005. His seminal works include "The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition," published in 1953. A founder of the A.D. White Center for the Humanities, he has remained a visible member of the Cornell community and is a longtime supporter of the University Library and Cornell's football team.

Cooke said the Cornell Association of Professors Emeriti has lent its support to the legacy project.

IFUP has published seven department histories so far. The legacy collection also includes a range of written and multimedia materials in collections devoted to Corson and physicist Hans Bethe, and several faculty and staff biographies and autobiographies.

Future projects in the works include "The Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University: A History and Personal Reflections" by former provost Malden C. Nesheim, professor emeritus of nutritional sciences; a 100-year department history of plant breeding and genetics; a history of the agronomy department; and a history of electrical and computer engineering.

The Abrams collection is available at http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/14294; and the legacy collection at http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/62.