Storied Charlotte

Robin Brabham, the founding director of the J. Murrey Atkins Library’s Special Collections and University Archives, died on August 11, 2024.

Robin was one of the first people I met when I joined the English Department at UNC Charlotte in 1984. Julian Mason, the chair of the English Department at the time, insisted on introducing me to Robin when he learned that I am a collector of rare children’s books.  Julian took me to the Dalton Reading Room on the tenth floor of the Atkins Library, where Robin’s office was then located.  Julian told Robin that we needed to get to know each other because of our shared interest rare books.  That meeting marked the beginning of my long friendship with Robin.

Robin worked closely with faculty members when acquiring rare books for the Special Collections division.  Given my interest in the history of children’s literature, Robin turned to me as a consultant when he had opportunities to acquire rare children’s books.  For years we worked together to build an impressive collection of historical children’s literature, including first editions of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books and Louisa May Alcott’s girls’ books.  We also collected early chapbooks for children and many nineteenth-century children’s magazines.  I was only one of many professors with whom Robin consulted when building the Special Collections. His efforts to acquire books and manuscripts that relate to the research and teaching interests of the faculty has resulted in a collection that is widely used.

When I learned of Robin’s death, I contacted Dawn Schmitz, the current Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Atkins Library, and I asked her for more information about Robin’s career at UNC Charlotte.  Here is what she sent to me:

When Robin started at Atkins Library in 1969 in the acquisitions department, his job was mainly to place orders for books others had selected. UNC Charlotte had gained university status only four years earlier, and the library had not yet established a Special Collections unit. But there were already a few hundred books that were designated as rare as well as three or four manuscript collections that had been acquired. Robin had his eye on these holdings. Having just graduated with a master’s degree in librarianship from Emory University, his aim was to build a career in rare books, drawing on a fascination with book collecting that went back to his time as an undergraduate studying French and History at Furman University. Robin’s plan worked – in 1973, he was offered the job of Special Collections Librarian.

Over the next 34 years, Robin developed distinctive and impressive rare book and manuscript collections. This accomplishment stands on its own, but the fact that it came without a steady and ongoing budget is remarkable. He did it through nurturing relationships and gaining the respect and trust of donors.

One of these benefactors was the book collector and businessman Harry Dalton, who, along with his wife Mary, generously provided funding to Atkins for the purchase of rare books – and for the construction of Atkins tower and the reading room for special collections on the 10th floor. Robin humbly attributed these gifts to the relationship between Harry and the university’s first Chancellor, Dean Colvard. However, without the confidence those two men placed in Robin’s stewardship, the Daltons’ generosity would not have found its way to Special Collections.

Although the bulk of Harry’s book collection went to his alma mater, Duke University, several stunning volumes found a home in Atkins. These include John Chrysostom’s Sermons on the Book of Job (1471 – our oldest printed book), a first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855), and Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). 

With this Wheatley volume as its foundation, Robin was able to develop a world-class collection by this author by working closely with Professor Julian Mason, a scholar of Black literature who served as Robin’s consultant and benefactor. Other works of Black literature Robin acquired include a rare early edition of Frederick Douglass’s first narrative and many other freedom narratives by formerly enslaved people.

Even after they both had retired, Julian continued to trust and collaborate with Robin. In 2016, when it came time for us to acquire and celebrate the library’s two millionth volume, Julian offered to let Robin select a book from his collection. Robin chose a rare edition of the autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1793), a foundational book in Black literature and now a jewel among our holdings.

With the support of these benefactors and Robin’s resourcefulness and ingenuity, Robin went on to build what he called “a small but respectable” collection of first and early editions of American literature by authors including Herman Melville, Louisa May Alcott, and William Faulkner. Other strengths of the collection include religion and theology, children’s literature, and 19^th-century Charlotte imprints.

These accomplishments in rare book collecting only comprise half of Robin’s contribution to developing special collections at Atkins. He also had a passion for history, which drove him to earn a master’s degree in history from UNC Chapel Hill in 1977 and build an invaluable research collection of archives and manuscripts documenting Charlotte and the surrounding region. This is not only a community resource but is also consulted by researchers from far and wide who are interested in topics such as the civil rights movement and busing for school integration.

Other collection strengths Robin developed include the founding families of Mecklenburg County, city planning, architecture, politics, photography, and motorsports. Like any excellent archivist, Robin had a special knack for knowing what was important to preserve, and he had his ear to the ground. Among the collections that Robin rescued from the dumpster were original drawings by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Eugene Payne and hundreds of reels of b-roll film from WBTV news.

Robin told me that although he was sometimes frustrated by the lack of resources or other limitations, the job at Atkins offered him a good deal of freedom and paid him to do the things he enjoyed. After he retired, he and his wife Edla became library benefactors, establishing an endowment fund for Special Collections. And he continued to support us through his community connections, curator’s talent, and his generosity of time.  We will miss him and always try to live up to his example.

Like Dawn, I will miss Robin.  However, I take some solace in knowing that the Special Collections division that he founded and built will always be one of Storied Charlotte’s most important cultural resources.