James Good is enriching humanity through the arts, music and culture
By Karmen Dowling
Thursday, October 22, 2009
John Lutman, Western Libraries, sits with alumnus and professor emeritus James Good at the Archives and Research Collections Centre (ARCC) where Good has donated several 19th century English literature books he collected over the years, including the ones they are holding.
James M. Good (BA’64, MA’65) has long loved the arts, and Western, and this is why he has given his alma mater some of his most prized possessions.
Good is not only a Western alumnus, but also a professor emeritus and former dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. During almost 40 years on campus he was an avid collector of 19th century English literature, most notably William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge first and early editions.
Since his retirement in 2000, Good has donated these books to the Archives and Research Collections Centre (ARCC) at Western Libraries. However, while he was able to provide them with the first three editions of Wordsworth & Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, the 4th edition had been elusive. Until now.
When John Lutman, The James Alexander and Ellen Rea Benson Special Collections Librarian, recently told Good that he had tracked down the 4th edition in England, Good wasted no time in giving Lutman the money to purchase the two volumes to complete the set. The books will arrive at the ARCC in the next couple of weeks.
Lyrical Ballads is a collection of poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature. Good says each edition is different and will allow graduate students and scholars a rare opportunity to study the differences.
Good and his wife Eva (BScN’65) have made numerous personal gifts to Western, as well as donations through his family’s foundation, Good Foundation Inc.
For instance, last year Good donated his Selmer bass saxophone to the Don Wright Faculty of Music. His family’s foundation provided funds to help with the renovation of Conron Hall and Talbot (Paul Davenport) Theatre. The foundation also provided funds to the Faculoty of Arts and Humanities to purchase anew projectors.
“Often little things can affect the quality of the student experience,” says Good. “In my case, I would hope that for certain music students to have tried a peripheral instrument like a bass sax is one plus in their Western education. The same would be true of a student of 19th century literature who might actually get to hold and look at Wordsworth's work in the form that he saw it when it was published--something quite different from reading two-column text in a clumsy anthology. It is also possible to trace first-hand changes he made in his published texts over his lifetime.”
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