The two-part exhibition "The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters" was organized by Rodney Phillips, curator of the Berg Collection, as part of the Centennial celebration of The New York Public Library. This catalogue is based on the exhibitions which presented writers from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries with drafts, letters, diaries. photographs and memorabilia in a personal and intimate setting. An essay by Dana Gioia, "The Prado of Poetry: A History of the Berg Collection" describes the background of Dr. Albert and Dr. Henry Berg and how their collection became one of the world's primary sources for literary research on American and English writers. In a scholarly introductory essay, "The Magical Value of Manuscripts," Dana Gioia writes, "The manuscript of a literary work became more than words; it represented a direct and unmediated physical link between viewer and author - a holy relic or shamanistic fetish...The scholarly alibi of libraries that they acquire literary manuscripts for intellectual reasons, therefore, is inadequate at best. Those needs could be better served by microfilm or photocopies at a negligible fraction of the expense. Textual information can usually by found more easily and completely in a variorum edition. Like the intricately rational web of theology woven around the irrational mysteries of faith, the sober explanation of institutions for hoarding literary relics seem like elegant post-factum justifications for what is essentially a sense of sacred awe. An institution of learning seeks significant manuscripts because they possess qualities that scholarship cannot entirely reproduce - an authentic, holistic connection with the great writers of the past. It is not the intellectual content of the manuscript that is important but its material presence - ink spots, tobacco stains, pinworm holes, and foxing included." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.